


Rosy Cheeks, Bloody Streaks

by MeanQueen



Category: No. 6 (Anime & Manga), No. 6 - All Media Types, No. 6 - Asano Atsuko
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-06-21 03:31:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 54,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15548637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeanQueen/pseuds/MeanQueen
Summary: Soulmate AU where flowers bloom wherever one’s soulmate is hurt.Shion’s soulmate gets hurt a lot. He wants to protect them, but isn't sure they even want him. Nezumi doesn't know what he wants. He just knows he has a lot of problems and Shion is now one of them.





	1. Fault

 

       “Do you think your soulmate will love you?”

       The boy with doe eyes and brown hair didn’t look up from his knuckle where the skin was parting to make room for something. He held his arm straight out away from himself and watched with fascination. Tiny white flowers bloomed from the raw red flesh. The petals were dotted with tiny beads of the blood that streamed out of the wound beneath them, but didn’t absorb any of the color. It wasn't time yet.

       “Shion?”

       He glanced over at his best friend, Safu, who was wrapped up in the same quilt as he was. She was petite girl with short dark hair and was eight years old just like he was, but with more wisdom than any adult he’d ever met. He loved her, but knew she couldn’t be his soulmate. She never had wounds that matched where his flowers bloomed. Her knuckle was unharmed.

       On top of that, she had never once come close to death, but Shion’s soulmate had.

       “Do you think,” she started again as she stared at his injury, “that careless soulmates who get hurt as often as yours can love anyone?”

       Safu was also more cynical than any adult Shion had ever met. Sometimes gratingly so, but she kept telling him that one of them had to be otherwise Shion’s oblivious and trusting nature would get him hurt. The two kids were bundled close, sitting on the floor of Safu’s back porch and watching the rain in her grandma’s garden. Shion’s knuckles were dripping even more heavily than the sky, but upon hearing Safu’s words his heart suddenly felt the heaviest of all. This was the first time their chatter of soulmates had ever taken a dark turn. The first time Safu had ever planted fears in Shion’s head. The first time he didn’t want to talk about his soulmate.

       Shion didn’t always understand his friend, but he knew she was smart so even though her question made him frown he asked, “Why wouldn’t they?” even though he wanted to say, _“Yes, of course they can.”_

       Safu’s eyes were now trained on the splotch of blood which spilled over the edges of the wood plank it fell onto. “They seem self centered. They’ve been getting hurt more and more often this past year, like they don’t care if their injuries hurt you too. Good soulmates try not to get hurt, but yours clearly isn’t trying.”

       Shion tilted his head. He figured his soulmate was just really unlucky.

       Safu’s eyes snapped away from Shion’s knuckles and onto his face when something crossed her mind suddenly. Her own face had dawned a look of devastation and she whispered, “You try harder than anyone to not get hurt, and every time you do you worry about how much you hurt your soulmate. Like last month when you cut your finger in your mom’s kitchen, you only cried because you were afraid you’d made your soulmate cry too.”

       Shion felt embarrassed and fidgeted a little. His extended arm also felt tired. “Everyone worries about their soulmate like that.”

       “Except yours.”

       Shion pouted. “You really think they get hurt a lot and still don’t think about me?”

       “Well maybe they’re…” but she didn’t seem capable of completing the thought while looking into Shion’s eyes. She looked at the rain and her face darkened with anger before she tried again. “Maybe they’re trying to get hurt to tell you they don’t want you.”

       It felt wrong to hear such a theory uttered by his dearest friend, a girl who protected him fiercely from everything she could. She couldn’t protect his soulmate, so it seemed to Shion that she was trying to protect him **_from_ ** his soulmate. If her method was to turn him against them, he didn't want her help.

       “They don't know me so how would they know they don't want me. Just like you don't know them or what they want.”

       She kept glaring at the rain.

       Shion fidgeted again, looking back at the flowers on his knuckle. Just a single petal had fallen from the wound into the sticky mess below. He wondered how long he'd have this wound before it faded completely, as all wounds from bond flowers did.

       Safu’s usual calm and scientific voice that lacked any of the ire Shion was sure her eyes still possessed rose again. “What do you think will happen when you meet?”

       “I think they’ll love me. If not, I will at least love them,” he promised himself.

       Safu didn’t seem to like this answer. Shion glanced up to see her look even further away from him to cast a dark look at the neatly trimmed rose bushes nearest to the porch. Rose bushes with bright red roses. The color flowers turned when soulmates were meant to be in romantic love, like what Shion hoped for.

       “Safu,” Shion sighed and reached up with his unharmed hand, hoping to touch her cheek and draw her back to him so he could reassure her, but as he did he saw that this hand’s knuckle was also turning red. He yanked his hand back and held it away from the quilt with the other as the skin split apart. Soon it would also be blooming and bloody. He could also feel the flowers pushing through the flesh of his cheek, around his other eye, on his spine, unfurling, ripping and flourishing while his soulmate was being beaten somewhere out there in the world.

       He started shaking.

       Safu took his hands, staining her own with his blood as she drew them back into the warmth of the quilt. She probably didn't want both his injured hands to be cold even if that meant the quilt would get bloody.

       That, of course, wasn’t why Shion shook. He was terrified. Less than a year ago he’d been covered rapidly in flowers, similar to now, but that time the flowers had begun to wilt. That time, he’d almost lost the person he was supposed to care about most in the world.

       Safu pressed her forehead against his and watched sadly as he grimaced through a flowering face. “They’ll be okay. They always are. But you don’t deserve this.”

       “I’m sure my soulmate doesn’t either,” Shion rationalized with a sharp, pained breath while flowers bloomed through the skin on his ribs. He knew that his soulmate had it worse, which wasn’t comforting.

       “They get in fights too often, so yeah, I think they do.”

       “Safu c’mon. We don’t know the context.”

       She closed her eyes and sighed.

       Shion knew Safu wasn’t jealous, she was just overprotective and wanted the best for him. The girl didn’t even want a romantic soulmate herself. She often reminded Shion how she would prefer a platonic one, in which case her flowers could turn any color besides white that suited her and her soulmate. If she ever met them. That was another thing Safu would often tell him; how much she doubted she would and didn't have any interest to.

       That was very uncommon, to flit through life without meeting the one person you were destined to. The thought made Shion sad. One thought that made him sadder, but was less uncommon, was the concept of meeting your soulmate but simply not loving them. Not only was that sad but not uncommon, it was dangerous. This is why, even if it turned out Safu was right and Shion’s soulmate wouldn’t love him, he would still love them. He would at least protect them from that danger.

       They already seemed to be facing too much from elsewhere.

 

❀❀❀

 

       The subway train jerked to a stop while Shion, now a young man in his twenties, wasn’t paying attention.

       The momentum almost threw him from the hanging ring he barely held. He only managed to catch himself by grabbing and then banging his face into a nearby support bar. The lab work in his hands had to be sacrificed in order to use both hands for the bar. Several files containing ecology reports on the farmlands and nature reserves surrounding the affluent city of N’Soix fell to the linoleum floor and scattered about with a weighty slap and some flapping.

       Shion was alone in the train so he didn’t hold back his frustrated groan. He dropped down to one knee to scoop the papers back into their files, and then stopped suddenly when he felt a stinging pain right down the middle of his lower lip.

       A drop of blood blipped onto the cover of the file he kneeled over.

       The self-accusatory worry Shion’s ribs were clenched by as he stared at the blood stopped his breath. He dabbed his thumbpad to his lip and held it slightly away to look at the blood. Unbelievable. He’d hurt himself and his soulmate once again. Even as an adult, he was proving to be awful at protecting them both.

       The electronic chime of the bus alerted Shion that the glass doors were about to slide open.

       He looked up dispassionately at them, or more specifically at his reflection in the glass. A foolish, clumsy man in a lab coat, with a bloody lip looked warily back for a moment, and then his eyes widened right as the doors began to slide apart. Now he stared out into the empty subway station, but he could still see the reflection of his lip. There had been white petals poking through the tiny wound.

       Shion stood with his files in his arm and touched his lip again. This time he felt the petals. So he hadn’t hurt his soulmate when he banged his face against the bar, his soulmate had been the one to receive this injury.

       The ever-invasive memory of an eight-year-old Safu’s words hung in his head, wondering sadly if his soulmate was thinking about him or not.

       The scientist shook that thought away and hurried off the subway train and into the station, where he rushed up the stairs, as if he could escape his doubts. Of course his soulmate thought about him. Of course this was the one thing Safu was wrong about.

       Shion really didn’t have much time to think about soulmates at the moment anyways. The ecology lab he worked at needed these papers, and then he had to get his work there done as fast as possible for the day. His mother was having a special at her bakery that afternoon and he was looking forward to helping her throughout it. Wonderings about his soulmate would have to wait until he was where he could let his hands do all the work and didn’t need to use his brain as much.

 

❀❀❀

 

       The bookstore’s warm and musty-smelling air rushed out to meet him when he opened the door.

       The slender young man with silver eyes a slate-haired ponytail breathed it in. He was relieved to give his lungs a break from the stinging early morning spring air, as well as his split lip which was practically numb now.

       The “front” desk was at the back of the store, hidden by rows of bookcases. From around several stacks of books piled beside and onto the front desk, a little old lady poked her head out and exclaimed, “Ah, if it isn’t my favorite boy! Nezumi, it’s been weeks!” She snatched a book from her desk and bustled around the pile and up an aisle towards him, slowly despite the quickness she took her tiny steps.

       Weeks hadn’t been enough time for Nezumi to forget to hold his hand out, which was promptly filled with the book.

       “Here you go! A book that tells several different versions of the story Sleeping Beauty,” she grinned up at him with a tight and gleaming eyed smile and jowls that hung low around her chin. “I’m not a fan of a couple of them, consent issues, you see. But on the whole it’s pretty interesting!”

       He placed a twenty in her perpetually shaking hand and asked, “Do you have a favorite version?”

       She pried the book back out of his hands, flipped to a page, and returned it to him. “I found this one interesting. Acts as if soulmate bonds aren’t even an element of the world. The prince doesn’t share the princess’s prick from the needle and when they meet the first time in the forest, they don’t cough up bloody flowers together. Even though they aren’t destined to be together, he’s determined to save her anyways. That pesky soulmate bond doesn’t matter to them.”

       All Nezumi could offer in reply to that was a disinterested, “Hm.”

       The old woman waved her hand at him dismissively with a, “Oh what do you know, you’ve always had bad taste in romances. Only interested in those awful shakespeare ones, otherwise no taste in romance at all. Was quite surprised you were asking for this book, actually!”

      There were a few other people in the bookstore. They looked up at the noisy clerk with irritated faces, but the irritation seemed to fall away into awe and shyness when they saw Nezumi. Really, they shouldn’t have been irritated anyways. Silence wasn’t always mandatory in a bookstore like it was in a library, although Nezumi had a tendency to be quiet in both and visit both frequently.

       He slid the book into his pocket and followed the old clerk as she hobbled back to her chair. Dust collected on his his fingertips because he trailed them along the worn bindings of the books on the wide shelves surrounding the narrow aisle. He saw several books he’d be coming back for as soon he he got his next paycheck.

       As the old woman got comfy in her chair she sighed dreamily to herself, “In my nutty opinion, not knowing you’re going to work out with your partner makes things even more romantic.”

       “Sounds like you enjoy the drama,” Nezumi guessed with a weary and false smile. Romance was a topic he had to regulate his coldness towards around the rare few people he liked. This bookstore clerk was one of them.

       “Oh,” she said thoughtfully and rapped her fingers against her chin. After a moment of silent speculation, she started to tap away on the keys of her old fashioned cash register. “Could be! The will-they-or-won’t-they _is_ pretty entertaining. But it seems like every romance story with bond flowers present seems to work out, even if they don’t always work out in real life.”

       Romance stories without the presence of bond flowers to indicate that the lovers were meant for each other were rare. They were also looked down on for encouraging people to leave their soulmates, which could be risky in practice. But sometimes necessary. Nezumi, however, wasn’t getting this book for the romance -- in fact he was pretty sure he was going to despise it for it’s romance, which was supposedly sketchy. He was getting it in order to research the characters for the upcoming play. He hoped to be cast as the evil godmother, or witch, or fairy, or whatever she was. Hence, why he needed to read a book about the story.

       The change for his book was placed forcefully into Nezumi’s outstretched palm just like the book had been.

       With his most charming smile and goodbye, Nezumi turned to leave. He had almost reached the door when the old woman’s call of, “Oh, wait just a moment!” caused him to pause. He didn’t turn his body, but still looked over his shoulder in the direction of the counter, though it was obscured where he stood.

       “It just hit me why it’s taken you so long. Didn’t your theatre relocate?”

       He nodded, pointed vaguely in the direction of the new theatre house and lowered his arm a moment later when he realized the clerk wouldn’t be able to see his gesture from the back of the store. Instead he voiced, “Madame Fei bought that run down cinema house. You know the one?”

       “Hmmm, maybe? Where exactly?”

       “The corner of broadway across the street from N’Soix park.”

       She gasped, hobbled into sight and lingered in the last few inches of shadow cast by the shelves. “Oh I do know that one! It’s pretty close to my favorite little bakery! What a good location for business and such an improvement over that dump under the bridge... no offense. I’d wish you all luck with the move, but you won’t need much luck with a spot as nice as that. Is that why you’re getting this book?”

       “Next play after this one.”

       She clapped her wrinkly little hands together and held them there as she exclaimed, “How thrilling! I’ll save up to get a ticket for that one.”

       Nezumi nodded left the little bookstore wondering if his manager, madame Fei, would allow him to simply gift the bookstore clerk a ticket. Probably not unless the ticket came out of his own pocket, which he couldn’t afford. Even with all the money she’d mysteriously come across, madame manager Fei was a stingy woman.

       The air was colder than it had been when he’d last been out in it, and he realized why when the first biting drop of rain landed on the tip of his nose. Nezumi frowned up at the sky, which was partly obstructed by the distant tops of the tall buildings and cranes. He wasn’t looking forward to driving around a rainy city on his motorcycle. It was futile to quicken his pace, as if he could beat the rain to his bike, but he tried to anyways.

       He slowed to a stop when he finally laid eyes on the sleek black motorcycle.

       It was _almost_ alone in the secluded little parking lot wedged between several buildings, except for one more vehicle. There was a dark grey windowless van parked right beside his bike, with one front wheel over the painted white line that seperated their parking spaces.

       Nezumi took a step forward and then a step back.

       Approaching the van didn’t feel right. It was bad news, but he still had a hard time stifling his pride. He was no coward, but even more importantly, he was no idiot and wouldn’t be falling for such an obvious trap. Most importantly, he wouldn’t be allowing himself to end up dead over a replaceable material possession like a bike, even though that bike was one of the things Nezumi had worked very hard for.

       Never once taking his eyes off the suspicious vehicle, he retreated back through the wide alley to the road, where cars whirred by. By now it was raining heavily enough that puddles were starting to form on the asphalt. Every passing set of wheels sent up a spray of water onto the sidewalk. He avoided that spray while he walked away from the alley, glancing back at it every so often to check for the van.

       Nezumi had made a lot of enemies in his life. He’d grown up immersed in drug-running, theft, spying, and various other crimes. Sometimes he helped criminal rings in return for safety and food, at the additional cost of pissing off other criminal rings. Sometimes he had no choice but to sink his teeth into dangerous grudge-keeping mobster’s arm or be taken away to who knows where and live a short life doing who knows what. Of all the angry faces that cycled through his head, none felt like the type to wait for him in a nondescript van like every B-movie with a kidnapping plot ever. At least this van wasn’t white, like they had put in an ounce of effort not to be cliche.

       Before he even reached the end of the block, the van was out on the road, driving in the direction Nezumi was walking.

       Nezumi knew the area pretty well. There was only that one entrance into that alley. The van would have no means of getting back in now that it had other cars behind it, except to circle the block and reenter. Knowing this, the dark haired boy took his chance. He doubled back and raced past the van toward the alley.

       It stopped abruptly as he passed, only to be honked at by the cars behind it.

       Nezumi glimpsed the van speed up to drive quickly around the far corner while he himself ran into the alley. He got on his bike, kicked up the safety bar and put on his helmet while he revved it up. He was out of that alley moments after, cutting so sharply to the right that he didn’t even end up on the road and drove on the empty sidewalk until he got to the end of the block. Instead of turning the same direction the van had, he drove the opposite one.

       After a few more turns in the theatre’s direction, Nezumi figured he had lost the van. This was a busy city with a start-and-stop driving style and a big vehicle like that couldn’t cut between cars as easily as Nezumi could.

       But Nezumi had bad luck. Before long the van reappeared in the little mirrors on his motorcycle handles. The biker scowled and looked over his shoulder to try and see who exactly was tailing him.

       It was impossible to tell due to their tinted, rain-flecked windows and the reflection of the bright morning city bouncing off the glass. Maybe there was one person, or maybe there were ten or twenty crammed in there.

       He turned out onto a street that ran alongside the park and considered driving right onto the grass and waiting for the van with his switchblade drawn. But of course that would be too dumb. What if the driver of the van didn’t want to have a fight so they simply mowed Nezumi down with their car? What if there were enough people in the van that he wouldn’t stand a chance? What if they were armed? What if a police officer was driving by and decided to arrest him for disrupting the peace before the van even reached him? There were too many ways a bad “plan” like that could go wrong.

       That’s when Nezumi saw a little bakery. It must have been the one the sweet little bookstore clerk had mentioned earlier. The building was small with only two stories and a wooden roof. It stood out starkly in comparison all the tall gleaming glass buildings that populated the city and surrounded it. The theatre, Nezumi supposed, was the only other outlier around the perimeter of the park. Like the theatre, the bakery had a narrow little alley that cut between it and the building it sat next to. An alley too narrow for his pursuer’s grey van.

       The van still hadn’t turned onto his street yet so the occupants wouldn’t see him turn into that alley if he did it now. So he did.

       A car honked as he sped in front of it, into the narrow and dark space. The opposite side of the alley was barred with a tall chain link fence, which meant if this alley failed as a hiding place he would be trapped, or would at least have to leave his bike behind to hop it. There was a small metal trash can back here, so he slid the bike behind it. Then he kicked down the safety bar and took out his keys. The bike was probably hidden well enough, but Nezumi wasn’t. Good thing the side door of the bakery was right there beside the trash can.

       Upon bursting through the door into what must have been the kitchen, he was eased immediately by the enticing smells that wafted in the air so strongly Nezumi was able to pick several out individually even with his motorcycle helmet on. The rough, warm and tingling scent of cinnamon and soaked apples, the soft and sweet bitterness of raspberries and powdery dough he could practically see in the air, and also the faint cedar of the worn cupboards. All were so inviting that Nezumi almost forgot he was possibly running for his life. That, and that he had just kicked this kitchen’s door open, a kick which had apparently broken an old padlock which lay on the beige and off-white diagonal floor tiles. It wasn’t the biggest kitchen considering this was a big-city bakery, but it did have several ovens in use and two fridges. A rack of aprons hung from the wall right beside the flapping door that must have lead to the front room, where the bakers served their customers and displayed their goods.

       Said bakers must have been out in that front room that very moment, which was lucky. They weren’t the ones chasing Nezumi; he had no reason to scare them. It would be a shame if he made an enemy of people who could create such delicious smelling treats. There was a heated rack of pie slices in the back, next to stairs upwards, that looked especially good and he was pretty sure he’d be coming back for if the bakers didn’t ban him forever.

       Cautious, he peeked back out the side door to the alley. Cars moved by quickly, and he didn’t see a van or any thugs stalking down the alley to try and find him. It would probably be safe to go in a minute or two.

       A light gasp drew his attention back to the flapping door to the front, where he saw a soft-featured woman wearing an apron and a bandana around her head to tie her brown hair out of her face. She began to retreat back into the kitchen with muted fear on her face that quickly morphed into a fear more intense and desperate when someone else tried to enter the kitchen from beside her. She barred the way with her arms and released a breathy, “No,” before the door flapped closed and Nezumi was left alone in the kitchen again.

       That didn’t last long. A young man had ducked under the woman’s arms and pushed through the door. His puzzled and defiant expression became fearful like hers when he stood back up and his warm brown eyes fell upon the tall stranger in his kitchen. With those eyes on him, Nezumi remembered that he was clad in combat boots, a leather-jacket, black gloves and a face-obscuring motorcycle helmet. A break-in from a person dressed like him must have been a little baker’s worse nightmare.

       But for Nezumi, the baker was quite the opposite. The young man was like a daydream. He erred on the shorter side with rounded features, fuzzy eyebrows, a messy thatch of brown hair which was splotched white from flour in several places. His gentle doe-eyes didn’t look afraid anymore by the time Nezumi got to examining them. Instead they looked puzzled. They also looked very familiar. Familiar in a way that made Nezumi think of ghosts and blood and fire, or rather what he thought of when he needed contest thoughts of them.

       Oh. Nezumi recognized him. How could he forget?

       This was a boy he’d left in his past, but still felt nostalgia for. This was a boy he hadn’t allowed closer, but still let the memory of him be a comfort when Nezumi’s inner demons woke up. As Nezumi stared back at him, he also realized that this was a boy with a small gash on his otherwise soft looking pink lip where tiny white flowers had bloomed. This was a boy who’s white flowers indicated he had not met his soulmate. Properly, at least.

       The woman stepped shakily back through the door to try and grab the boy, probably her son, and drag him back into the front room of the bakery. He let her, never breaking his curious stare at Nezumi until the flapping door did it for him.

       It was only once he had disappeared that Nezumi’s mind filled the space the bakery boy had been standing in with a smaller version of him, a seven or eight year old. One that trembled and smiled, covered in his own blood and wilting flowers, just like all the other ghosts. A child made of nightmares who grew up into a man who looked sweet like the sugary treats he created. Both were comforting images, despite the uncanny nature of the smaller one. He had helped Nezumi move on from one part of his life to the next. But if Nezumi stayed around him, he feared he’d be swept back up by that past somehow. He needed to get away from him, at least for now.

       This time the blighting effect the morning air had on his lungs and split lip was welcome. Upon recognizing the bakery boy’s curious doe eyes, the sweetness of the bakery had turned from inviting to choking. He inhaled deeply and sharply, realizing he hadn’t been breathing. The way he leaned against the outer wall of the building was like a man who’d been out at sea for years and forgot how to balance on land.

       The bakery boy was right through that wall, which was still too close.

       Nezumi swung his leg over his bike and took off into the street, because avoiding the van didn’t matter as much as leaving all of his ghosts in the past, even if this was one ghost that was still very much alive.

       Why had his lip been split like that? Like Nezumi’s?

       The biker slowed to a stop behind a jeep at a red light. He clenched and unclenched his grip around his motorcycle’s handles. No, no he couldn’t just leave the boy and his mother like that, scared of a stranger in their kitchen. He didn’t want to plague them like he was sure the boy and his split lip would be plaguing him.

       When Nezumi got the chance, he turned around and willingly returned to a place he had just been trying to flee. He wondered how many times he’d end up returning there in the future.

 

❀❀❀

 

       Shion and his mother waited in the rain on the park bench across from their bakery.

       Shion could see through the glass storefront that no one was moving around inside. No motorcycle-wearing burglar had come out of the kitchen to raid their cash register. Everything still looked pristine.

       The police would be arriving soon to make sure it was safe to return.

       When Karan had called for their customers to leave the bakery with an announcement about their current break-in, everyone had mostly been worried for her and Shion. Several people immediately picked up their phones to call for help, and one had even tried to get past Karan into the kitchen to try and chase the invader away. Karan convinced the customer, a regular named Yoming, that he needed to be more concerned with the safety his niece, Lili. Because of her quick thinking and calm handling of the situation, nobody had gotten hurt.

       Karan recounted everything to one of the three officers that showed up, while the other two went into the bakery to investigate. When they came back, they called, “It’s clear!”

       The baker and her son cautiously followed the third officer into their little storefront and then into the kitchen, where they all stood around the door to the side alley. There on the floor was a scrawling note and a rolled up bill.

       It was written on a hastily ripped out, age-yellowed and almost empty acknowledgements page from a book called _Various Retellings of Sleeping Beauty_ . Ignoring the book’s title and the names written there by the book’s author, the note said, _“I didn’t take anything and won’t come back, just needed to hide. For the lock.”_ The bill was a twenty.

       Of course, Shion and his mother searched Karan’s home above the bakery and then around the bakery itself to see if anything was missing, not content to simply take the word of their invader. Shion puzzled over the note the entire time. He wondered about the face behind that dark motorcycle helmet.

       When night fell, Shion brought his mother home with him and let her stay in his guest room, just to be safe.

 

❀❀❀

 

       The sun was setting on the first week since the new theatre’s completion. It was called Night’s Dream, just like the last shoddy one under the bridge had been, and looked just like the fortune it had cost madame manager Fei to renovate it. Opening night of the theatre as well as its first play was fast approaching, but Nezumi’s mind was not on it.

       He didn’t look back once as he left the dazzling structure behind, wandering into the darkness of the park. Twilight could never touch this park due to the buildings that hid it from the last of the sun’s rays. It didn’t bother him. He was used to wandering through dark forests, though the time of his life where his walks through them had long since ended, in favor of wandering through street lamp-lit alleys and damp sewer tunnels, and now through the wealthy city of N’Soix.

       His walk through the park to the other side was short. Even though the park itself was large, it was long and lean and quickly traversed from the side the theatre faced. On the opposite side of the park from the theatre stood the bakery. It was simply called Karan’s Bakery, and it would soon be closing for the night.

       Since his break-in, Nezumi started watching the storefront from a distance every few days. The past week he’d been doing it almost _every_ day. He always watched it after darkness fell and before the bakery boy went home. Nezumi still didn’t understand why he did it. Every time he tried to think of reasons, he just got angry at himself and about the answers he came up with, answers which could not be true. Answers suggesting that maybe this boy was someone Nezumi was meant to spent time with, that maybe this boy was unusually special to him somehow, in the present and not just in the past.

       Nezumi shook that thought away. It wasn’t welcome. No thoughts of soulmates ever were.

       A worse thought entered his mind instead. The thought of his sister falling with blood and flowers on her hands, surrounded by smoke. It was harder to banish that image without thinking about the bakery boy.

       The area of the park Karan’s Bakery faced was especially dark due to all the trees clustered in the area. There was also a bench against one of the biggest oaks, which made for a comfortable spot to sit and watch.

       The entire face of the first floor was glass, including the door. There was a table on one side of the door, and a few booths behind that. The other side had a display case filled with fake treats meant to lure potential customers inside and let the scent of the bakery do the rest. Nezumi sat down in the bench to watch his doe-eyed ghost rearrange the fake treats in order to make room for a new one. It was probably something he and his mother -- who Nezumi assumed was named Karan -- had just added to the menu. Nezumi couldn’t see the treat from where he was and decided to look it up on their online menu later. He also couldn’t see the boy’s face well from this distance, or at least not well enough to pick out tiny details like lip cuts. Nezumi’s own cut had healed. He was currently injury free. Was this bakery boy?

       That question and several others loomed over Nezumi throughout his short watch. Was this bakery boy feeling safe in the kitchen again? Did he look at everyone with that curious face and those gentle eyes? What was his name? Why had he helped him all those years ago?

       Closing time came, the customers left, and the soft-faced family of two got to work cleaning up.

       This was when Nezumi enjoyed watching him the most. He got a glimpse of the sillier side of the boy, or the sulky side, or the side where he moved more sluggishly and let the wear of the day show. Today he was energized. He and his mom danced around while they mopped up, even after the boy slipped and fell once. Nezumi wondered what they were dancing to. Nezumi wondered if they were singing along, or if they were the only ones providing the music if there was music at all.

       When the time came for the boy to go home, he hugged his mother and left out the front door, wearing several layers of sweaters and a scarf. He walked to the stairs that lead down to the subway station and disappeared.

       Nezumi watched the people who came and went from those stairs, knowing the boy wouldn’t come back out but hoping he would anyways. Why did he hope that? Why was he watching him at all?

       The lights in the bakery clicked off and were replaced by the lights of the home above it. Nezumi was usually gone by now. But that meant his spying was over, permanently, and for some reason Nezumi didn’t want to accept that.

       Nightmares had been waking Nezumi less and less frequently since his spying had begun. Last night he even had a dream about the bakery boy. In this dream, Nezumi showed him around his very first home and introduced him to his parents and sister. These were people he dreamed about every single night, but with the bakery boy’s presence, the way he dreamed of his family had been drastically altered for the better. When Nezumi woke up in the morning, crying, he decided that tonight would be the last time he spied on Karan’s Bakery. He had to stop, to leave the boy alone and let him continue living his life while Nezumi moved on with his own.

       He stood up from the bench and retreated back into the darkness of the park, trying not to let the bond flowers he’d seen on the boy’s lip trick him. He knew the baker couldn’t be his soulmate.

 

❀❀❀

 

       Persephone was not Hades’ soulmate according to the actual myth. The manager didn’t think that would go over well with the critics, so she changed it for the purpose of their play. She claimed that because of her choice, the Night’s Dream’s play about the two greek gods was their most popular performance yet, when in reality the popularity was thanks to the theatre’s new location.

       All the actors bowed while the vast audience cheered and threw bouquets and roses at their favorite actors’ feet. The area before Nezumi was the most densely cluttered by flowers of the whole stage. Finally, once many of the audience had began to rise and file out of the seating arena and the passages behind their balconies, the cast allowed themselves to escape through the wings to the backstage.

       “I knew I made the right choice! It was phenomenal! What a beautiful story of love I created!” the manager cheered and hurried around, pinching cheeks and praising herself.

       A love story? It was just another stockholm syndrome story. If anyone’s, the old bookstore clerk should be scolding his manager’s taste in romance. The best part of the story was how violent and vengeful Persephone ended up, but that had been something his co-actor had pushed for, and not madame manager Fei’s idea.

       Nezumi exhaled deeply once he was out of the sweltering glare from the stage lights. He threw the heaviest and sweatiest piece of his costume, his long black tattered side-cloak, to the floor and sighed again, lighter this time.

       “Hey Hades,” came the familiar bubbly voice of Rita, the costume designer who was usually assigned to him and a small handful of other actors.

       He looked up at her blankly and saw the tall girl with sandy golden flowers blooming from her arm. She leaned against the shoulder of a brick-shaped, red-faced new guy whose name also started with an R but Nezumi couldn’t remember it.

       “Ryo and I are gonna _congratulate_ each other on a job well done in the spare dressing room,” she said with a wink. “You’re welcome to join us after you get that costume off. But don’t rush and don’t you dare rip it, I worked so hard on that.” She lead Ryo away with a skip. The new boy, with his long black hair, snapped his head around and gawked at Rita.

       Rita was not Nezumi’s soulmate, obviously. Neither was Ryo, and they weren’t each other’s either. Nezumi wasn’t even sure he could consider them friends of his, just safe people to mess around with for meaningless sex. On and off, he had been in relationships like this with a various castmates and crewmembers for years, and they with each other.

       He considered the two R-named people and their offer until they disappeared into the usual bustle of the backstage area. It was as hectic back here as the old theatre had been. Props and other items from the set were carried to the storage area in the arms of several crew members. Makeup artists bickered over stolen foundation bottles and mismatched false eyelashes. Sweaty and laughing actors splashed each other with water bottles until the manager rampaged over to howl at them about getting the brand new floors all wet.

       This was a safe place to Nezumi, even though it was also a new place. It just didn’t feel new because it shared the same atmosphere he had been used to since he was a young teenager first welcomed off the streets. The same people he had first had a chance to grow up in a safe environment around ever since… well. Ever since he was small.

       With his guard lower than it was whenever he was anywhere else, Nezumi went to his new personal dressing room. It impressed him how there were already a few bouquets and gift boxes waiting on the barren vanity table. The wealthy city folk of the this part of N’Soix were apparently keen on having a theatre to call their own and favorite actors to fawn over. They seemed like the type to give expensive gifts too, gifts Nezumi was eager to pawn off.

       He put the heavy cloak of his ghastly costume on the first empty rack he saw, and then saw something else.

       A figure was hidden behind the costume rack that was heavy with his old costumes from the old theatre. As soon as Nezumi saw the person, they lunged forward, pushing the costumes aside and barreling toward him with something shining in their hand.

       Nezumi’s guard had been down. His reaction rate was too slow, too sluggish, and he tried to leap out of the way but didn’t succeed.

       The stranger grabbed him. Whatever was in their hand was no longer gleaming, because both of their hands were on Nezumi’s shoulders, shoving him backwards off his feet.

       Nezumi was slammed into the vanity. He didn’t know if he remained silent in his surprise or if he cried out, but he did know he heard the vanity’s tall mirror crunch under the weight of his back, and then glass shards were raining down on him.

       His shoulder hurt on the front, which he was confused by but didn’t focus on.

       Instead Nezumi focused on getting his hand around one of the biggest glass shards he saw bounce against the vanity’s desktop. The jagged edges cut into his palm, but he couldn’t afford to worry about that. His only worry was to drive the glass blade into his assailant’s neck with as much speed and force as he could.

       His assailant, a man wearing a familiar mask, recoiled a bit, choking and attempting to scream through the liquid that was surely pooling in his mouth.

       Now Nezumi had just enough space for to bring his legs up and use them to shove the man even further off him, hard.

       The man tumbled into the clothing rack, which clanged against the wall of his tiny dressing room as it buckled under his weight.

       By now the door to Nezumi’s dressing room had been pulled open and he saw surprised faces and hands and arms reaching in at him, at his attacker, at the streak of blood across the floor that linked the man and Nezumi.

       Nezumi pushed himself off the vanity and cringed when his shoulder protested. But he didn’t want to stay still and let the pain die away, he wanted to finish the job. He wanted to cut the mask off from the man’s body with his head still inside it.

       The man tried to push himself up, collapsed back into the costumes, then tried again and succeeded. His legs were shaking. When he finally raised his head, Nezumi realized this was a half-finished mask Rita had just showed him yesterday for the first time. It was supposed to be the head of the dragon for the upcoming play, Sleeping Beauty. She’d left the mask in Nezumi’s room because she’d forgotten it after the two had a brief stint of meaningless fun against the vanity.

       Rather than face Nezumi, who would be the obvious victor if the fight continued, the man pushed through the growing crowd of actors and crewmembers to escape. Some tried to grab him, but he slashed at them with the same shining thing he’d rushed at Nezumi wielding: a knife. It was red with blood.

       And then it wasn’t anything at all. The man had escaped through the crowd with it. Nezumi heard screams and doors being pulled open and then slammed. He knew the attacker was gone. Maybe not far, but too far for Nezumi to pursue.

       By the time he looked down at his burning shoulder and realized that he was hurt, Nezumi’s body was numb.

 

❀❀❀

 

       The bakery was packed and Shion was in over his head with all the baking needed to be done for maybe the first time in his life. He dashed around the small kitchen, weaving around his equally frenzied mother, Karan, trying to keep the bakery stocked while she tried to keep up with special orders and man the front counter whenever a customer rang the bell, which was almost frequently.

       “We just ran out of cinnamon rolls and dark chocolate raspberry tarts,” she exhaled breathlessly as she re-entered the kitchen through the flapping door. For once, her eyes didn’t dart nervously to the other door in the back of the room that lead out to the alley. She was too preoccupied, or maybe finally put at ease by the new locks she’d had installed a few days ago.

       Shion had just finished icing a batch of replacement cinnamon rolls. He held them up proudly for a moment before he carried the entire tray past her, through the door to restock them up front.

       The customers were all dressed in fine clothes and chattering happily, recounting their favorite moments of the play they had seemingly all attended. Apparently it was the opening night of the first play the new theatre down the road was performing. When he put the rolls into the display case under the counter, some of the customers cheered and clapped, no doubt still swept up by the atmosphere of the theatre.

       Shion bowed as if he were one of the actors they'd just seen, rung a few customers up, and then escaped back into the kitchen.

       One of the ovens dinged. It had finished baking a cake Shion had started before the throng of customers showed up. He retrieved two non matching oven mitts from a haphazard pile of them.

       “If it doesn't cost a fortune, we should see if we can catch one of the upcoming plays,” Karan suggested with a grin.

       “Have you ever gone to a play before?” Shion had not, but liked the idea of it.

       “Once,” she answered with a dreamy voice. “It was about Don Quixote.”

       Shion pulled the two layers of a foamy yellow vanilla cake from the oven and set them down on an open space near the half finished tarts.

       “And it was one of the dates I went on with my soulmate.”

       Shion paused, completely losing his train of thought. He glanced over at his mother.

       She was humming to herself, perfectly content even in her overworked state. If mentioning the man who was now absent from her life bothered her at all, she didn't show it.

       Shion didn't let it bother him either. He dove back into preparing the tarts and getting ingredients out for other treats the bakery would soon be running low on.

       He saw his blood before he felt the wound.

       The vanilla cake was almost fully cooled from the oven and ready to be covered in frosting. Shion knew it would be the most perfect treat in the bakery, at least for a few minutes until one of the fancy customers bought it or until Karan finished the baumkuchen she’d been making as a special order for several hours.

       He reached for the bowl of thick white icing he made while the cake had been in the oven. As soon as he grabbed the bowl and returned his gaze to the light fluffy cake, he saw the cake’s base and frowned in confusion.

       The cake was sinking into itself due to all the blood pooling on its plate.

       A quiet “Oh,” escaped Shion’s lungs when his brown eyes fell upon his bloody hand, which he’d been using to turn the plate and examine the cake. That wasn't the main source, however, so he brought his eyes up along his arm, to his shoulder.

       He could see the shape of flowers freshly unfurling from a new wound under his t-shirt and apron.

       The startled breath of his mother was enough to draw his attention away from the wound his soulmate had suffered and he offered her as reassuring a smile as he could, a weak one, a worried one, a failed one.

       He rushed up the stairs at the back of the kitchen which lead to where his mother lived. She had one bathroom and Shion had no choice but to bloody it again like he had so many times growing up. Layer after sticky red layer of clothing was cast into Karan’s little tub before Shion could examine the newest wound his soulmate had suffered.

       It was sometimes hard to tell what caused a wound because of the flowers in the way, but Shion was pretty sure this one was a stabbing. It was a narrow and deep cut into the skin right under the far end of his clavicle. The blood was rushing out fast, too fast, fast enough that Shion’s world was starting to spin. But he was in little danger. Both the pain received and the blood loss caused by blooming bond flowers were supposedly around half that of the injured soulmate, unable to scar and very rarely able to kill the one with the flowers. There were sometimes exceptions, but Shion figured half was about right for how much pain he was currently feeling, though he’d never been stabbed so he didn't have a real basis to compare.

       An irrational voice told Shion to make it worse so maybe his soulmate's burden would lighten. Few believed it worked like that, and Shion was not among them except for in this very moment. He listened to the voice, reached up to his shoulder with a steady hand, and yanked a clump of flowers out.

       The roots were thin and red and fleshy and full of blood, almost exactly like little capillaries. Maybe that's exactly what they were.

       The petals of Shion’s flowers were still an unstainable white, which might have been another reason he was so compelled to rip them out. He had this bizarre feeling they were lying to him. But they couldn’t be. If he had ever met them, ever looked into the eyes of or spoken to his careless soulmate, flowers would have rushed out of both their throats. First meetings were undeniable, unmistakable, and terrifying for everyone involved.

       Shion still felt like there was something wrong about his flowers. Maybe it was somehow his bond flowers’ fault that his soulmate could be dying in a gutter somewhere instead of finally, permanently in his care. Maybe it was his bond flowers’ fault they would start wilting soon again, like they had when Shion was seven.

       He kept pulling them out, little by little, grisly red root by grisly red root, imagining all the horrible situations his soulmate might be in.

       And then his mother was shaking him from his trance with, “Shion! Shion look at me!”

       Shion blinked and mumbled, “Mom.” He looked at himself in the mirror. He was covered in blood, there were flowers scattered everywhere and more were quickly growing from his original wound to replace those he’d repeatedly cast aside.

       Karan was weeping when she sat him down on her toilet, stroking his face with worry, cooing and calming him with gentle words that he didn’t hear.

       Shion hated worrying her and tried to listen to what she said, but it was so hard. All he could hear was his own breathing and what he thought might have been the dying breaths of a careless stranger with a deep wound in their shoulder. They would be dying alone. Again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you liked, more to come ♡  
> comments pointing out grammar/spelling errors are appreciated as I didn't have a beta reader at the time this chapter was written


	2. Hospital Wards

 

       The approaching wail of a vehicle’s siren didn’t comfort Nezumi as it might have comforted others. He’d grown up wary of sirens. His first instinct was always to flee in the opposite direction with whatever he had stolen, away from whomever had called the police on him. But this time the siren was attached to an ambulance, and this time it was castmates and crew who had called it. This time it had been called for his sake, not for the sake of bringing him justice and trapping him like an animal. Regardless of their intent, trapping him was exactly what they would be doing.

       He barely heard the paramedics enter the backstage of the Night’s Dream with their stretcher. A quick and hazy glance informed him that other members of the theatre were holding the fire escape doors open for them.

       “He was stabbed by a maniac!” someone with a raspy and vaguely feminine voice shouted at the paramedics. The voice did sound familiar, but his senses were so dull he wasn’t sure he would even be able to recognize his own voice.

       His view of the flashing blue and red lights outside was obstructed by a paramedic’s torso and he groaned weakly in protest, still afraid to let the lights out of his sight.

       “Stay awake, Nezumi,” a crying girl with yellow flowers on her arm croaked.

       Nezumi was lifted onto a stretcher by the paramedics and gave the crying girl a blank stare, which only seemed to elicit even more tears. The world began to shift, and the people standing around him were carried away. Or rather, Nezumi was.

       The last thing he clearly heard was that raspy woman’s voice -- madame manager Fei, he finally realized, but upon his realization a bitter taste settled in his mouth -- venomously spitting, “That is my favorite actor of this whole lot, so you fix him up good and healthy you hear me!”

       Whether or not they answered her, Nezumi could not tell. He hoped they didn’t. The manager didn’t deserve an answer for treating him like a broken toy, even though he did want to be fixed. But if he was going to be fixed, he wished he could be the one to do it. Not paramedics or doctors. Not in an ambulance or in the tiny axenic rooms he imagined.

       “Sir?”

       He blinked and watched the sky. Everything else was moving and blurry, but the night sky was still. It was the only thing that wasn’t making him dizzy.

       “We’re going to life you into the ambulance.”

       For one hopeful moment, Nezumi thought he could see stars up in the black sky, like back when he roamed his forest home as a child. But then Nezumi remembered this was a city. The only stars in the sky were actually planes or satellites. Manmade. Fake. But no, these stars were neither of those things. They were flecks of light dancing in his eyes, a result of the blood loss perhaps.

       “Can you hear me?”

       He could, vaguely. On top of that he could hear the ambulance doors shutting behind him, softer than they really sounded. Then he heard the clank of metal as IV stands were pulled across the floor, the engine revving and tires rolling along asphalt, and most uncomfortably, the unstrapping and restrapping of velcro and his body became stiff. He didn’t like that so he struggled.

       The paramedics kept talking. They loomed over Nezumi but their faces were blotted out by the tiny bright light one of them was shining directly into his eyes.

       He groaned and turned his face into his shoulder to shield his eyes. It worked a little too well. The light disappeared but so did everything else.

 

       When the world returned he was in a hospital bed, sectioned off from the rest of the room by a mint green curtain that hung from the ceiling. A beeping heart monitor, a bag of blood and another bag with clear liquid were his only company.

       Nezumi lurched upright and was immediately stricken with dizziness and pain that coursed along his side, starting from his shoulder. The metal arms on each side of Nezumi’s hospital bed felt slick with chemicals when he grabbed them for support.

       He had never been in a proper hospital before. Cost aside, he dreaded the concept of his life being in any hands but his own. He didn't intend to let this first visit last its course either. There was an amalgamous sickness in the air that had almost been completely overpowered by an even more offensive sterilization. It made him feel like his throat would be burned away by bleach or whatever else they used to sanitize the place if he didn't leave soon.

       When he threw his covers off his legs and saw that they were bare up to his thighs, he realized he’d been stripped of his costume from the current play and redressed with a pale blue hospital gown. This made him uneasy. He hated the idea of anyone touching him for any reason while he slept. He also hated hospital gowns and wished they’d left him in his bloodied Hades robes; blood didn't seem out of character for the greek god of the underworld. IVs, on the other hand, seemed less likely.

       Nezumi reached for the bandages keeping the needles imbedded in the crook of his arm, but his attention was stolen by the noises of the hospital before he could do anything about them.

       Clearly heard voices filled the hallway outside and shoes clicked and squeaked against a hard floor, but the floor in this room was short blue carpet. Nezumi figured the door to this room must have been wide open and tried to keep quiet. The noises passed after a few moments.

       The IV needles were withdrawn as carefully as possible. As a child Nezumi had witnessed a man accidentally kill himself with the bubbles in his syringe full of heroin. Adult Nezumi wanted to avoid complications like that, but having never removed a needle before, he did sloppy work and left two vastly different bloody holes in the crook of his arm. One was bleeding.

       A new set of footsteps he heard in the hall entered Nezumi’s room while he dabbed the needle pricks with the old bandages. He froze and listened as the person drew the curtains at the far side of the room so light filtered through Nezumi’s mint curtain, tinting everything he saw a soft green. That didn't last for long because then the person drew his curtain.

       Nezumi remained still and met the person’s look of surprise with one of distrust.

       It was a nurse whose eyes fell to the bend of Nezumi’s arm where he was still pressing old bandage. He clicked his tongue disapprovingly and scolded, “You should never remove your own IV.”

       “Did you want me to take them with me?” Nezumi huffed and scooted down the bed to where the metal bars ended.

       “To the restroom?”

       Nezumi bit back his natural sarcasm and simply said, “Where else?” because he doubted the nurse would allow him to go if he knew Nezumi meant to leave the hospital altogether.

       It worked and the nurse seemed convinced. Too convinced. He took another step closer and adopted a friendlier persona to say, “Right then, I’ll help you get there.”

       “I can make it on my own.”

       “No sir, you can’t.”

       Nezumi ignored him and attempted to swing his legs over the bedside opposite of where the nurse was standing. That’s when pain and dizziness caught hold of him again and again he had to grab the metal bar on his side to steady himself. The breathy groan that filled the space around him didn't sound like it belonged to him.

       By the time the scattered white dots that obstructed his vision just like the night before finally cleared and Nezumi could feel his body again, there was an older woman with with a clipboard wearing glasses and sky blue scrubs standing in front of him. The nurse was behind her.

       “Hello Nezumi, I’m your doctor,” the woman said with a kind voice but he was could tell it masked her exhaustion. “Lay back down please.”

       “I’d rather not,” Nezumi hissed wearily. His heavy shoulder felt like it was on fire while the rest of him was too cold and light.

       The nurse stepped around the doctor to push against Nezumi's uninjured shoulder until he was laying back down on the thin mattress. It was impossible to fight him even though he was so gentle.

       “Do you know where you are?”

       “Hospital,” Nezumi gritted.

       “Do you know why you’re here?”

       “Stabbed.”

       The doctor nodded. “There will be an officer in soon to ask you about your attacker. In the meantime, because we don't yet know the nature of your stabbing, we have a guard at your door and are restricting your visitation to--”

       Nezumi tensed. If anything having a guard made him feel even more trapped.

       “--just your immediate family and your soulmate.”

       So that meant nobody would be visiting. That was the only thing Nezumi found himself approving of about this whole situation.

       The doctor had a contemplative look on her face and was quiet for a moment before she added, “And yes, the guard will keep you here too. We can’t have a victim of a stabbing up and about or especially not leaving before he’s ready.”

       Ah, so his doctor was good at reading people. Or maybe his castmates at the theatre had warned her what to look out for about him. Some of them had known him ever since he was a scrappy teenager watching them rehearse from the rigging. Either way Nezumi was going to have to be more cautious around this doctor.

       “So if you want to leave because you don't feel safe here, then you don't have to worry. You are. If it’s because you’re worried about the bill, your manager is covering the expenses. You have no reason not to let us take care of you.”

       Nezumi almost let a glare slip onto his face. This would-be glare was not directed at the doctor exactly, but at his manager. That guard was his manager’s idea, no doubt. She could be an overprotective old bat towards her favorite actors. But even with all the money she had mysteriously came upon recently, she wasn't paying anyone any better, just moving them to a fancy new theatre in the city’s wealthy district. He didn't really care about her money though. He was more worried about how she seemed to think she owned him.

       “So,” the doctor continued with a lighter tone and a smile, “Do you really need to use the restroom, Nezumi?”

       He was tempted to say he did and take the first chance he could to escape, but knew the staff would be the most watchful of him during his first few hours awake. It would also be best if he escaped on his first try so their guards did not stay up after a failed attempt. So he said, “I can wait a little while.”

       The doctor nodded slowly and the nurse furrowed his brows.

       “I’d like to begin the real check up then. How do you feel?”

       He felt annoyed by the doctor, suffocated by the chemicals in the air, felt like every shred of his agency had been stripped by him, vengeful towards whoever had stabbed him -- a dragon. No, it had been a man, which meant he could kill him easily if he ever figured out who he was under his stolen dragon mask -- and pained by his arm. Especially that last one. Even the blood running through the area made it sore, as if every throb opened the wound a little wider. But instead of any of these things he said, “Fine" because maybe she’d let him go sooner, just in case his escape attempt did fail.

       “No pain or stiffness anywhere?”

       “Only from the shitty bed.”

       The doctor and the nurse both looked skeptical. The doctor asked, “You’re sure? Can you raise both arms and hold them out straight please?”

       Nezumi stared at her defiantly and resisted wincing when he lifted both arms. The sharp pain returned to course down his side from his injured shoulder, but at least his doctor wouldn't see it on his face.

       She jotted something down on her clipboard and asked him to move his arms a few different ways, always asking if he felt any pain or stiffness but he always always lied and told her he didn't.

       “Be honest,” she goaded once she told him to put his arms down.

       “I feel fine.”

       “Listen, I need to know the truth to gage if you need physical therapy or medications to ease the pain. That doesn't sound so bad right?”

       “No need, I feel fine,” he repeated. Physical therapy probably meant he would be spending even longer in the hospital, or at least longer away from the stage, and medication for pain almost always meant drowsiness. He couldn’t afford to be drowsy. A drowsy Nezumi would be easy to surprise and land back here in the hospital, or worse, a grave.

       A grave was probably the goal of his masked assailant. But who was he, and why did he want that?

       “You shouldn’t feel fine, Nezumi.”

       He kept his icy stare and didn't amend his fine-ness. Even though being a known liar was apparently too late to be avoided, he didn't want to be so transparently fickle.

       Rather than let her vexation show on her face, the doctor took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Think of it this way then: the faster you heal the faster your soulmate does too. Lying to me means you’ll both be in pain for longer.”

       That earned her a scoff.

       Her face became puzzled and she looked down at her notes. “But you’ve already put them through a lot, it seems. You have a lot of scar tissue…”

       Nezumi looked away from her. He was already sick of listening to this soulmate angle on convincing him to be honest with her. He had been sick of soulmates for almost his entire life.

       “Does your soulmate get hurt as often as your scars imply you do?”

       Nezumi shrugged.

       “This stabbing couldn’t have anything to do with your soulmate, correct?”

       Nezumi was slow to respond to this question. Soulmates could be violent toward each other. He knew this well. Soulmates killed each other for various reasons, usually crimes of passion but sometimes crimes of avoidance or revenge for all the little injuries they gave them throughout their lives. Most commonly one might kill their soulmate simply out of fear for the future, fear of being connected to someone when they wanted to be free or keep their secrets to themselves, and sometimes even just in a panic to avoid feeling the infamous pain of spitting up flowers. There was apparently nothing comparable to it.

       “Nezumi?”

       He thought of his little sister’s blood-slicked hands as she fell into smoke, then fire and ghosts, ghosts who had all surely been in more pain than people who were just meeting their soulmates. No, he didn’t want to think about that. He banished those awful things from his head by thinking about the boy he owed his life. Instead of the wilting one, he pictured the one he’d seen in the bakery with the split flowery lip. The boy Nezumi knew couldn’t be his soulmate. That boy was still on his mind when Nezumi finally shook his head and said, “No, I was not stabbed by my soulmate.”

       “I-I wasn’t suggesting that,” the doctor said with widening eyes.

       “Why bring them up then?”

       “Do you know them yet?”

       “Nosy aren’t you? I don’t see how this can help you treat me.” His stare was getting darker and darker. He had no reason to like this woman, no reason to be nice and behaved, to answer her questions or help her in any way. As far as he could tell, he’d be answering these questions again later for a police officer anyways.

       “Well, I am supposed to ask about your soulmate in case it can prepare us for another incoming patient,” she explained and adjusted her glasses. “With bad injuries like yours, when one person comes in their soulmate usually does too. Then if you could prove you were soulmates you’d be roomed together.”

       Nezumi huffed but didn’t offer her a shred of emotion about any of this. If his soulmate was in a hospital somewhere because of him, whatever.

       “For their sake, can you at least try to be helpful?”

       He didn’t answer her and hoped that sent a clear enough message.

       The doctor inched a little closer and put her hand on the metal bar Nezumi had grabbed twice during dizzy spells. That’s when Nezumi saw the tiny streaks on her arm where the very edges of red flower petals poked through. It seemed her soulmate had received a bad cat scratch recently. “What if,” she started wanly, “instead of you, it was your soulmate in this hospital bed talking with me? You’d want them to be honest and recover quickly and smoothly right?”

       No. He didn't care what his soulmate did or didn't do. He didn't care about his soulmate at all.

       “So how about we pretend that you _are_ your soulmate so you can be worried about yourself that same way you would worry about them.” She smiled like someone who thought they’d just played the winning card in a game. In reality all she’d done with her soulmate hypotheticals was convince Nezumi even more thoroughly on escaping the first good chance he got.

 

❀❀❀

 

       Something had been said to him, but he didn’t know what.

       His eyes were wide, scanning around the large ward full of doctors and nurses with friendly faces, parted mint green curtains and padded beds where other patients sat with their families. Every patient a doctor spoke directly to seemed to have flowers blooming from their bodies somewhere. But of course, that made perfect sense. This was the bond flower ward, where people went when their soulmate’s accident took such a toll on them they both had to be taken to the hospital.

       Shion had been here before. This was his fifth time, but he still couldn’t wrap his mind around it.

       Among the family members of some of the patients were the injured soulmates themselves, also dressed in nothing but a light blue hospital gown, usually in a wheelchair or heavily bandaged or pushing around IV stands or oxygen tanks.

       A nudge from his left drew Shion’s attention away from the babble and to Safu, who sat right beside him on the padded bed. “Listen,” she whispered with a nod in the doctor’s direction.

       “Your injury seems to be healing normally,” he heard from in front of him. “The bond flowers are doing their job.”

       Shion nodded slowly.

       “Or, well, the part of their job we like anyways,” chuckled the friendly doctor.

       The brown-eyed boy, sitting almost naked with the upper half of his hospital gown pooled around his hips, didn’t nod again. Instead he feebly attempted to return the bright smile his doctor gave him. All of his smiles were easily seen through as obvious lies ever since he’d first received the wound. His eyes were still watery, his nose still ran, and he couldn’t make his limbs stop trembling even when he clenched the end of his gown so tightly his knuckles had turned bone-white. Regardless of how healthy this doctor claimed he was, Shion felt like he was going to fall apart.

       But he couldn’t do that.

       He had to stay intact. If not for his soulmate, who may or may not want him but Shion shook for all the same, for his mother and for Safu. The two sat on either side of him, each squeezing one of his hands in the same show of support unbeknownst to each other.

       “There won’t be any scar tissue even though you aggravated the wound,” his doctor said. He was a tall and portly man with a clean shaven face and a tiny mouth so his smiles kind of made him look like a giant baby. “You just need to worry about eating food with iron and vitamin C.”

       Shion glanced over at a nearby table, on which several other patients’ meals and personal items sat. Among them was his half-full glass of tomato juice. The doctor had arrived before he had a chance to finish it.

       “You’ve lost enough blood that you might be lightheaded for a few days. I’m on the fence about whether you should be admitted for observation, or if I can let you go. But,” he said sharply and leaned towards Shion, “If I let you go you can’t do anything strenuous for awhile. If you have a job that involves lifting or a lot of moving around, you’ll need to take a few days off.”

       Shion blinked, considering his options. He glanced around at his surroundings while he slipped his arms back into the short sleeves of his hospital gown. When he finished, all he reply with was an extremely intelligent: “Um…” Everyone he saw in the ward had arrived after him, and some of the beds had been occupied several times by several different patients. His examination had taken the longest of anyone’s.

       “He’d like to stay for a few days,” Safu answered for him.

       Shion, Karan and the doctor all looked at Safu.

       “Fine, _I’d_ like him to stay for a few days,” she revised. “I don’t trust him not to try to hike around the woods and collect samples to study for that lab of his.”

       “O-okay,” Shion agreed, though he wasn’t actually sure he did. Safu knew he wasn’t the rebellious type and would do as the doctor told him. She must have had some other reason for accusing him of such things.

       “We can’t have that!” the doctor exclaimed and excused himself to have a nurse fetch some papers for Shion to sign. Once he did, the doctor lead them to a room and told them he’d be admitting Shion for two nights to start with and might add a few more later if he deemed it necessary. The room was small and barren. The only decorations were posters on the walls that detailed how to do certain stretches and other things. One had a set of rules patients here were expected to abide by, and another was a photo of a pair of kittens snuggling in a basket of flowers with some motivational words about not giving up on finding your soulmate. The entire wall was made up of dressers and windows covered by thin white curtains. It was night so Shion doubted he’d see anything but streetlamps if he bothered drawing them.

       “I can grab you your laptop and current ecology projects from home and drop them by tomorrow,” Karan was saying, but Shion didn’t hear her well either. Now all he could hear was the _absence_ of the chatter from the ward.

       Shion threw himself down onto the bed once the doctor left. It was a mistake. His perception of feeling and balance seemed to have been left where he’d been standing before and needed a moment to catch up with him. When it did, he noticed that the bed was stiffer than he liked beds to be.

       “Hm,” he heard from Safu. She sounded like she was near the kitten poster and was probably looking at it with distaste.

       “Why did you want me admitted to the hospital?” Shion asked into the stiff bed, and then rolled over onto his back so he could look over at his friend. “What’s the real reason, I mean.”

       She smiled that sly smile of hers and made herself comfortable on the end of his bed while Karan closed the door. “Even after I spent a year away, you still know me too well.”

       “You don’t ever change, Safu.” She was a very stable person.

       “I hope you mean that in a good way,” she huffed and swung her legs back and forth in unison over the edge of his bed. Shion found his eyes drawn to her knee. Even under the black nylon tights she wore, Shion could see the bumps of flower petals that had grown out of a scrape on her knee. Or rather, a scrape on her soulmate’s knee. Safu’s flowers were red.

       Safu had met her soulmate a little under a month prior. It had been her soulmate’s first day at the physiology lab Safu worked at. This person destined to be with Safu was a rambunctious girl named Ann whom Shion still had yet to meet. He wouldn’t have to wait long now though; Ann meant to come meet Safu’s grandmother by the end of summer. He was excited for it. But his excitement fell down to his stomach, transformed into a twitching knot of nervousness when he remembered that Ann’s boyfriend of three years, Roy, would be visiting as well. According to Safu, wherever Ann went Roy went too.

       In a way, Safu had been right. Her relationship with her soulmate really did end up being platonic, even if fate didn’t want it to be. She seemed happy with that so Shion tried not to let himself fret over her too much.

       “A _mostly_ good way,” Shion answered her and put a bit of effort into making his voice sound humorous, but it mostly sounded tired. He sat up slowly.

       “You know I can never let a score that isn’t perfect rest, Shion. I’ll be focusing on that _mostly_ another time, but for now, as for your hospital stay... ” The tiny short-haired girl’s eyes were gleaming with mischief, “I knew you wouldn’t do anything too strenuous, it was just a cover story. The real reason I wanted you admitted is so that you can snoop around the hospital.”

       Shion let one loud laugh escape his mouth, which seemed to brighten both his mother’s and Safu’s moods a little. “Oh Safu, _you_ apparently don’t know _me_ very well anymore. I’m not the snooping type.”

       “Nah, you can be nosy when you want to be, I know you can. And I’ll stick around to help you snoop! You probably need my help anyways finding where they keep the trauma victims.”

       Karan’s expression shifted from confusion to knowingness. She still looked nervous though and turned her gaze to Shion, who still didn’t get it.

       “Why do you want to go to the trauma center?” Shion asked with narrowed eyes.

       Safu sighed. “To see if we can’t find your soulmate, of course.”

       Shion tilted his head, gawked at her. “You think my soulmate is in the trauma center?”

       “Yeah? That’s where victims of stabbings go, right? I mean, they could be in the ICU too I guess.”

       “You think they’re in this hospital though?”

       “Well,” she started and adjusted her position to make herself comfortable for a lecture, “Possibly. Hell, even _probably_ . You might argue, _Safu there are a lot of hospitals in the world_ , but remember: You’ve made your life here, so your soulmate is likely drawn to this area. And statistically, hospitals are the number one most common place where soulmates meet each other. Considering how painful first meetings can be, I find that convenient.”

       Shion only blinked at Safu once throughout her monologue. “You want to go hunting for my soulmate.”

       She snapped her finger a couple times in Shion’s face like he was a disobedient dog. “Keep up Shion, you already knew that.”

       “I… I don’t know if I want to meet them like,” he paused and then gestured at the lumps under the shoulder of his hospital gown, where the flowers were still fresh and strong. “Like this.”

       Safu flicked her hand on her wrist at him and sneered, “They’re worse off than you, so who cares?”

       “What if they care? What if they don’t want to be seen with an injury like this?”

       “Shion, with their track record, they always have injuries like this. It would be unusual to meet them without any.”

       Karan spoke up to add, “It might cheer them up.”

       Safu gestured at Karan and started grinning again and then offered her a double thumbs up for the help.

       “Cheer them up?” Shion echoed. He blinked a few times then said it again very quietly to himself. He knew _he_ would definitely be cheered up if his soulmate were to walk in on him right now, but somehow he didn’t think it would work the other way around. It took him a few moments to come up with actual reasons why that might be the case. “You think a stabbing victim wants to deal with the pain and stress of choking up a flower? It might kill them.”

       “It never kills anyone,” Safu reminded him. “It’s an awful experience but it’s worth it, trust me.”

       Shion and Karan both gave the girl the same surprised look. Shion felt another smile slip onto his face at the thought of Safu’s and Ann’s social media profiles, which were full of selfies from the two girls.

       Safu folded her arms, frowned and averted her eyes like she’d said something embarrassing. When she recovered from her awkward admittal of happiness, she grinned at Shion and added, “I bet they’re looking forward to it, Shion.”

       Shion heard Safu’s eight year old self whisper, _“Maybe they don’t want you.”_ He remained still, watching current Safu smile at him. She was so sure of herself, so confident that she was right because she was always right. But how could she always be right if she was now contradicting herself?

       Karan had been looking at the biggest poster in the room, the one about the hospital’s rules. Shion noticed she was frowning slightly when she looked away from it.

       Safu noticed her frown too. “What’s up Karan?”

       She seemed to consider withholding whatever it was, but relented after a moment and decided to turn back to the poster to read, “Unless given permission and accompanied by a nurse or doctor, a patient may not leave the bond flower department for any reason, even in search of other patients who may share their injuries.”

       Safu’s vehement groan came out just as clearly as Shion’s relieved sigh.

       “But it does say that sometimes patients from other wards will be encouraged to visit if they share an injury with anyone from this one?” Karan added, but her face didn’t look as hopeful as her face.

       Safu’s, “Hm,” sounded exactly like the noise she’d made while looking at the kitten posters.

       “Not that you should let that stop you.”

       “That’s okay Mom,” he said as he eased himself back down onto the bed and kicked his feet under the covers. He was tired and the idea of running around the hospital looking for someone who might not even be here was… well, to claim he didn’t want to look for his soulmate would be a lie, but it was out of his capabilities at least for the night. “It’s better this way.

       Safu’s eyes widened and flicked between Shion and Karan incredulously. “You’re really not going to try? I mean, I knew you weren’t much of a rule breaker, but Shion,” she paused and took a breath, then said a bit more slowly, “You’ve always cared so much about meeting this person.”

       Shion managed a smile, a genuine one. Safu wasn’t crazy about soulmates. The whole concept of being destined to value one relationship above all others had always bothered her, even though she never said so to Shion. But he still knew. It amazed him sometimes how emphatic she could be about Shion’s own soulmate. She was more passionate about Shion finding them than she ever was about finding her own.

       Talk shifted to work, to the eccentricities of the soil in the nearby forest, to the bakery’s influx of new customers, to how Safu planned to sleep over at Shion’s for a week and help him recover before she went back to her own city. She wouldn’t be gone long after that. She was planning to transfer to N’Soix’s local physiology lab so she could live closer to her ailing grandmother, and also to Shion and Karan. The last conversation the trio had before Safu and Karan had to go for the night was about available housing near the senior center.

       Shion’s dreams that night were memories. Specifically of the night he’d woken up in agony to a storm and to bloody flowers that began to wilted the moment they had fully bloomed.

 

       He was alone when he woke up the next morning, greeted only by even more blood. It was near his face, but he didn’t want to look at it yet. He wasn’t ready.

       The first thing he noticed after how sticky his arm felt was how light danced around his room. The sunlight that came through the windows was green and shimmering, reflected off oak leaves. It had been too dark the previous night to tell that his window overlooked a grassy area between the hospital and the parking lot. He wondered if there was a park down there and if he would be allowed to walk around in it.

       Once his heart rate had dropped to a level that was reasonable for someone just waking up, Shion let his eyes return to his arm. It was bent so the blood that had dried between his upper and forearm glued them together. When he unbent it, the skin of the area resisted for a moment before it made a wet click and parted. Now the separated glob of blood had a rough texture.

       Shion wiped a bit away from the area that stung the most and saw a pair of puncture wounds. They almost looked like a vampire bite, though one of the punctures was bigger than the other. Also, as far as Shion knew, vampire bites didn’t leave bond flowers.

       “I was hoping to be here when you woke up,” he heard from the doorway.

       He turned to see Safu kicking the door gently closed because her arms full of bags that probably contained his things, and from the look of the one plastic bag, Thai food. “You were close. What time is it?”

       “Almost seven.”

       “Unusual hour for Thai food.”

       “You’re welcome to your free hospital breakfast if that’s what you’d prefer, Shion, but I had a whole dream about Thai food. This is the only destined thing I’ve ever cared about.”

       Shion looked down at his bloody arm, unamused by how he too had an almost prophetic dream.

       Safu finished setting down all her bags and looked like she was about to say something positive before she saw the blood. “Oh Shion!” she gasped and rushed over to hastily kneel by his bedside and look closely at the punctures. “Why didn’t you say anything? This is at least an hour old!”

       “I hadn’t quite processed it when you showed up.”

       She inspected the wound. The girl had a doctorate in physiology, so while she couldn’t treat him, she could at least assess him as well as any doctor in this hospital. But, unlike the doctors in this hospital and more like Shion, Safu preferred to put her doctorate to use in private laboratories, where she ran tests on blood samples and figured out if the owner of the blood had any rare diseases.

       “What’s the verdict?” Shion asked once Safu moved away from his arm with pursed lips and a squint.

       “The verdict is that your soulmate’s a dumbass. Only a particular type of person rips out their IV like they’re an action movie protagonist. I just can’t believe they’re _your_ type.”

       Shion mouthed, _“My type”_ but his mind was swirling with a different bit of the information Safu had given him. His soulmate had an IV in their arm at some point. “They really are in a hospital.”

       “I mean, I should hope! But they might not be anymore, considering this blood is an hour old and they pulled a classic hospital escape trope.” She stood up and began to hurry to the door. “Hold tight, I’ll grab a nurse. And go ahead and dig into that Thai food if you want it.” And then she was gone, leaving the door open wide after her so the sounds of the hospital filled the room.

       While she was gone Shion stared at the punctures of his arm. Regret weighed the arm down, but he couldn’t understand why. Was it because he felt like he’d missed his chance to find the culprit? More likely he’d simply missed a chance to get in trouble, but he couldn’t convince himself so.

       Safu returned with the nurse and Shion continued to dwell on these thoughts, completely absent throughout the cleaning and bandaging of his arm, then while the staff replaced his sheets, and even once he was alone again with Safu. She couldn’t stay long, however, as she had to run off and meet a real estate agent to look at houses. He’d been waiting to ask her about his thoughts until they started to make sense, but now he had no time. He wasn’t sure what he wanted when he blurted, “Do you think they’re still here?”

       Safu flipped her short hair out from the wrap of her scarf, looking at him like he was speaking gibberish. “Who, where?” She pulled on her coat and zipped it up halfway.

       “My soulmate.”

       “In the hospital, you mean?”

       He nodded.

       “Bit late if you’re just now deciding you want to look for them. I’d guess they’ve gone. If they were even in this hospital, that is. But if you’re itching to look for them--” She ripped the poster about the hospital’s rules off the wall, wadded it up and stuck it in her pocket, “--Then go for it! Listen to the stupid cat poster instead.”

       “I--that’s not why I was asking,” Shion mumbled. He didn’t understand why he felt like he’d been caught red handed.

       She shrugged and pulled her purse up onto her shoulder. “I wish I could be here to help you snoop or not snoop, but there’s more demand than there is supply for houses in N’Soix. I’ll be back in the evening, but don’t wait up for me.”

       Shion didn’t know what to say. Instead of saying anything, he settled on weakly waving Safu goodbye, and she returned that wave as she dashed out of his room.

       He did as she said and didn’t wait up.

       When lunchtime rolled around, Shion slipped out of the bond flower center without permission or the company of a staff member to keep him in check. It hit him immediately that he would be lucky to get anywhere without being stopped. Shion had no idea where the trauma center was, he had never been good at sneaking around or lying, and he stood out. His hospital gown from the bond flower center was a deeper color of blue than all of the other gowns he saw patients in, probably for the purpose of helping the staff spot a rogue patient hunting for their soulmate just like Shion was.

       A new regret was clinging to his back now. Safu had gotten into his head again, and he wasn’t sure if he hated or loved her for it. There was something thrilling and enjoyable about sneaking around the hospital, but of course he was also far more afraid that he knew he realistically should have been. He was pretty sure the worst that could happen if he was caught was to be lead back to the bond flower center.

       Shion hid beside a couch in an almost empty dayroom a few floors below where he’d come from.

       The room was fairly large and only had two walls, completely open on two sides to show forking hallways and the individual rooms of other admitted patients. Shion was not sure what kind of patients this area had. Only two were out of their rooms. One sat in the dayroom with Shion, snoozing on the couch he hid beside while the TV rambled about local news. He’d seen another one smoking out an open window until a nurse ran up and scolded them. Nurses were the most common occupants of the area. They were everywhere, pushing carts, going from room to room with food and other supplies, talking gently and quietly into the rooms like those inside them were all just waking up despite it now being past noon.

       A gruff voice laced with impatience ordered, “Sit. _Now_ ,” which was almost shocking to hear in contrast to the kind voices of the nurses.

       Shion peeked around the side of the couch, over legs of the patient sleeping on it.

       He saw a brawny man in a white shirt with his hands around the handles of an empty wheelchair. He was frowning into the open doorway to the men’s bathroom at whoever was standing there. Shion couldn’t see much of that person from his angle besides a set of pale fingers that were gripping the door frame tightly. He also saw their shadow swaying a bit and wondered if they were having difficulty staying upright.

       “I can walk.” They had a pleasant voice even though it was breathless and vehement. But it definitely _didn’t_ sound like the voice of someone who could walk.

       “I doubt that. And even if you could, I’ve got orders to keep you off your feet.” Ah, so he was a private guard of some sort.

       “Orders from madame Fei?”

       The guard remained silent.

       The person in the doorway released a single humorless laugh. “Fuck your orders.”

       The way Shion’s lungs clenched when he saw that person, anther patient, slide out of the doorway and past the wheelchair was abrupt, violent. It was like all of the air inside him and around him was sucked into a vacuum along with the noise, the motion, and even Shion’s sense of touch because the carpet he sat on suddenly lost all texture. All he could register was their -- _his_ \-- face.

       This face was heavily obscured by the patient’s silky dark slate hair. It draped into his eyes and over one shoulder almost like a liquid or a darkening sky filled with rain clouds, though it wasn't wet or even greasy. Shion wanted to run his fingers through it. And he also wanted to brush it aside to see what color this stranger’s eyes were, wondering if they possessed any color at all. Colorless eyes would suit him best, Shion found himself thinking, and only wondered for a moment why the idea felt so nostalgic.

       Shion had once met met an inky haired boy whose eyes looked like shards of the storm that accompanied him. It was one of the most terrifying nights of Shion’s life, whereas he felt completely at peace spying on this hospital-gown clad stranger. He’d almost forgotten that his heart should have still been racing from his covert hospital adventure.

       For the second time during Shion’s hospital stay, he knew someone was speaking -- the guard -- but couldn’t process any of the words.

       He couldn't tell if the inky haired patient understood them either. No recognition showed on his face. It was a pale face, one without any pink to imply he was even alive, but it was still beautiful. Or at least, no pink anywhere except his lips. They were wider and thinner than Shion’s own, and currently a bit chapped. Despite their thinnness they had a lovely sloping shape to them even when his mouth was in the hard line he currently had them. They were probably expressive and capable of charming smiles. But right now they just told Shion the boy was tense.

       The guard spoke again.

       This time the patient did react. Shion’s hopes raised for a moment when he saw his lips spread on one side into a half smile, but it wasn’t a happy one.

       If the guard hadn’t suddenly tried to grab the ink haired patient, Shion felt like he might have been lost in the patient’s face forever.

       The ink haired man sidestepped gracefully but couldn't keep his balance afterwards and crumpled against the wall. A warning growl like that of a wild animal rose in his throat.

       At this point Shion returned to his body. He hadn’t realized he’d moved to sit the middle of the dayroom floor where anyone could see him and where he could see the patient easily.

       Shion didn’t know he could hate a stranger so much until the guard shoved the wheelchair forward, pinning the wobbly boy momentarily to the wall by his ankles until he collapsed forward into it, and forward toward Shion who the wheelchair had its back to. The patient didn't make a noise, but the fabric in the chair strained audibly.

       “That’s better,” the guard grumbled and stepped around the wheelchair to forcefully reorient his charge in the chair by his shoulders.

       The patient hissed in pain and tried to elbow the bigger man.

       Though the elbow had been a speedy blur, the bigger guard managed to barely dodge. Instead of getting angry, he seemed begrudgingly understanding. He switched to adjusting the patient’s position by his forearms until he was sitting in the chair how it was meant to be sit in. But only for a moment. When the patient tried to push himself out of the chair, the guard shoved him right back into it. “Don’t. It's only a two minute walk, just accept--"

       With more strength than either the guard or Shion was expecting, the patient kicked him. The force sent the guard stumbling through a nearby doorway into another patient’s room, meanwhile the wheelchair was sent careening into the dayroom directly at Shion. The wheels seemed to be sticking and didn't cooperate with the rug, so Shion watched with horror as the wheelchair began to topple backwards with the patient still on it.

       Both handles of the wheelchair landed heavily in Shion’s palms, which he hadn’t noticed he’d outstretched. The sudden weight dragged Shion’s entire torso down momentarily, painfully, sending a shock through his injured shoulder so he gasped.

       Maybe another cause for his gasp was the patient’s eyes, which he glimpsed only for a quick moment. It hadn’t been long enough to see many details, but their color -- or the lack of it -- had been a haunting silver. Silver like the eyes a seven-year-old Shion had stared into and seen his crying reflection in. He’d been so afraid he would witness the life fade from those already spectral eyes, but they had remained sharp and wide throughout the night.

       These silver eyes were hidden behind hands. The fingers were slightly parted so the patient could stare through them at Shion.

       Shion inhaled sharply. He remembered where he was and what he was doing. He was a patient in a hospital several floors away from where he was supposed to be. He had a tipped wheelchair and the head of a likely-terrified stranger resting on his thighs while he loomed over him, staring.

       “Asshole,” he heard the guard groan. “I just scared the shit out of a burn victim because of you.”

       Shion swallowed and slowly pushed the wheelchair back upright, grateful that the patient seemed too shocked to attempt to fight him like he’d fought the other man.

       The guard entered Shion’s vision like a raging bull.

       He flinched, expecting to be shoved away forcefully, but instead the hand on his chest that pushed him back was gentle. Overwhelmed as Shion was, however, even a gentle touch was enough to unbalance him. He landed on his butt.

       The guard placed himself between Shion and the man in the wheelchair. All he said as he hurriedly began to push the patient away was, “Sorry,” though he didn’t sound sorry, he just sounded tired and angry.

       The wheelchair refused to roll on the carpet at first, but after a few attempts the guard managed to wheel his charge away, telling him, “You’re more trouble than it’s worth. I don’t know how your friends at the theatre can put up with you.”

       The patient’s voice came out as a quiet hiss, like he hoped Shion wouldn’t hear him, but Shion was listening too attentively. “I don’t know how you can put up with my manager.”

       “Your manager didn’t hire me.”

       “Now you’re just lying.”

       The guard didn’t say anything more.

       Neither did the patient, and he didn’t look back at Shion either. He wished he would. He wished he’d see what the young man’s eyes looked like, wished he could know for absolute certain that they were silver. Maybe they would be sharp, focused, distrusting. Maybe they would soften when the man was amused, just like the eyes of that boy he’d met when he was seven.

       The one that almost died. The one Shion almost thought was his soulmate, but...

       Shion kept staring after the two men even once they’d disappeared around a corner. He saw a stormy night instead of the barren hospital walls.

       He had no idea how long they were gone before he heard a displeased groan from behind him. When he looked he saw a pair of nurses frowning deeply, with disapproving eyes that darted between Shion’s face and his hospital gown that was the wrong shade of blue.

       The nurses stood in the doorway of a dark room where he heard soft sobbing and the quiet assessment of a doctor. Behind them he saw the doctor. He was speaking to a woman whose throat and chest were covered in red flowers. She sat beside the patient in the bed, nodded fearfully while the doctor while the doctor briefed her on the dire condition of her soulmate.

       Shion returned his eyes to the nurse who stepped into the dayroom to ask, “Are you with someone or did you just decide to come here alone?”

       He knew he was too shaken up to run and didn’t have the energy or the skill to lie. He let them scold him then lead him back to where he’d come from.

       He hadn’t even been gone from his little room for half an hour but he felt exhausted when he returned to it. Stiff or not, the bed was a comfort to climb back into. He buried his face in his pillow, wondering if the inky-haired man had been the boy he’d encountered on the worst night of his life. All he knew was that this man was apparently involved with the theatre, and he only knew of one theatre in N'Soix.

 

❀❀❀

 

       Nezumi didn't have a clock within eyesight. He had no idea what time in the night it was that he heard his guard’s footsteps leaving.

       He had accustomed to the pain enough that this time when he threw the covers off and swung his legs over the bedside, he was “fine". Or at least, he had a manageable reaction.

       There was no time to examine the room outside of Nezumi’s tiny curtained off section; the guard was likely only taking a bathroom break and would be back any minute. Nezumi had to hurry as fast as his aching body would allow. He slipped into the hallway, which was empty besides gurneys waiting against the walls and the distant chatter of the night shift staff, and rushed towards a nearby staircase. He doubled over onto his stomach grimacing only once on the way.

       “I hope when I meet my soulmate it doesn't hurt too much,” a child’s voice greeted him when he pushed the door to the stairs open. Two little kids sat on the steps that lead up, and they barely glanced up at him as he began his descent.

       “My mommy used to say my daddy coughed up bloody flowers for a whole week ‘caus’a how much love he was gonna be in with her,” the other kid said slowly, “but she stopped saying that once daddy left with that other lady.”

       “Oh, I’m sorry.”

       “It’s okay! I just hope my flowers don't turn red when I meet mine.”

       Nezumi was having difficulty stifling his breathing by the first turn on the staircase.

       “What?! But red means romance! That's the best color!”

       “No it's not! Also I don’t think I care about how bad my first sight pain is, just pain like mommy has right now. Unromantic soulmates don’t hurt you that way.”

       “I bet they can.”

       “Nuh uh.”

       “Yeah huh, I bet unromantic soulmates can die of heartbreak too.”

       “I said nuh uh!” and that was the last bit of babble Nezumi bothered to listen to. He had to concentrate.

       Every step down Nezumi took caused his legs to shake more and more violently. The steps also looker steeper and steeper every time he looked up from the current one to see how many he had left. Eventually they were too many and too steep.

       Nezumi lowered himself down onto the step behind him, gasping and heaving from the agony that churned outwards from his shoulder. When he raised his shaking hand to the area, he found the hospital gown was wet. His stitches must have been torn out.

       A fleeting worry that the bakery boy might feel his pain took Nezumi by surprise. He wanted to think himself ridiculous, but maybe he wasn’t. He was here in this hospital, after all. He was a patient, wearing almost the same gown Nezumi wore but in the color they gave only to those admitted due to bond flower injuries. One matching cut on his lower lip was one thing, but to be admitted at the same time as Nezumi, to run into him again? It was becoming a bit too thorough to be a coincidence, even though there was nothing else it could be. They couldn't be soulmates. They'd already met once before. They'd made eye contact, they'd spoken, they'd touched. But... not as adults, he supposed. Not since they were children.

       Nezumi shook his head. He couldn't afford to think about this, he had to get out of the hospital before he encountered the boy again or was driven insane by the doctors and police officers.

       Just over one story up, the metal door burst open and hit the concrete wall with a KLANG! Heavy, angry footsteps followed that noise downwards, downwards, until they were behind Nezumi, upon Nezumi, until the owner of those footsteps was yanking him painfully upright by his underarms.

       Nezumi couldn't remember crying out or fighting. He must have though. It was when the guard dragged him through the hall of his original floor that Nezumi saw bloody prints the size of his own fists dotted all over the guard’s white shirt. It was when he looked up and spotted the doorway to his room that he felt a rawness in his throat he hadn't felt before because he couldn't even say, “Stop.”

       Suddenly a scream rang throughout the hospital. From around the corner near Nezumi’s door, a woman whose throat and chest were covered in red flowers came skidding. She gestured violently back down the hallway she’d come from and sobbed, “Please! I think he’s gone into shock!”

       Nezumi felt the stride of his guard falter and slow.

       Doctors at the other end of the hallway came running, already calling, “What’s wrong? What room?”

       She pointed and started to explain, but it was too late. She was too late. Nezumi watched as the flowers that represented her soulmate's injuries wilted. The dusty brown that grew through the flowers, starting from over her heart, crinkled every flower in moments. The petals began to fall. The woman’s screams became more breathless, more desperate, more broken. She was gone the next moment and left a trail of crinkled brown petals behind on her race to her dead soulmate’s side.

       It all looked so familiar. That woman and her soulmate were like the ghosts Nezumi dreamed of. Silver eyed ghosts whose bodies were rapidly blooming, desperate to save their loved ones from cracking flames or die with them. There was one specific little ghost who never got to meet her soulmate, who never got to live much of a life at all. She was one ghost he was supposed to protect, but hadn’t.

       Nezumi was pushed through the doorway, which broke the spell the wilted petals had on him. He was almost grateful.

       His guard seemed to be attempting to be gentle now. Or maybe he was just rattled by what he’d seen. Regardless, he let Nezumi stumble over to his hospital bed and only interfered to keep him balanced and then to press the little button on Nezumi’s bedside requesting the aid of a nurse.

       Nezumi collapsed onto his side, burying his face in an overly sanitized pillow. He was defeated by exhaustion and pain and by witnessing that moment of powerful grief.

       His attempt had failed. Now the hospital would be near-impossible to escape. He had no idea how long he would be trapped in this sick and sanitized place where soulmates lost each other all the time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chap's already in the works~
> 
> i stg i WON'T put u thru another 8k+ in which they dont talk to each other fsdsaskjgjkl


	3. Meetings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's self harm in this chapter. I think it's pretty low-key but if you want to skip, when you see " The next thing Shion frowned at " ctrl+ f to " The sun was still ".

       The gutted fridge would have to do for the night.

       A child with silver eyes scanned the junkyard’s rusted hills of metal scrap one last time before he eased his broken body inside the dirty white box. The fridge was on its back so he pulled the door almost all the way closed above him. He blocked it from fully sealing with a bent pipe just in case the fridge might suffocate him in his sleep otherwise. That seemed likely enough to happen even without the its help.

       His lungs were fighting him, too tired and bruised to cooperate. It could have cost him his life earlier while he was trying to escape the men he’d failed to pickpocket, the same men who had bruised his lungs in the first place.

       The boy sniffed and wiped away a tear, determined to not cry even though he knew it might help him. Even if it might, it could also alert anyone still hunting him that he was in this dinky little fridge waiting for either sleep or the more permanent version of it.

       Sleep did come, but it didn’t last.

       He opened his eyes slowly, never having been very good at waking up even though he knew something was wrong. He was cold. It was fall and he had on only a ratty shirt and shorts, but it was still colder than he was expecting it to be. Water was leaking in through the little crack he’d left himself to breathe. The crack also let in _so_ much noise. At first the boy thought he heard human wailing and thought of his ghosts, but then it hit him that it was wind.

       He kicked the fridge door open right on time to see lightning streak down the bulbous storm clouds to somewhere in the distance. He wondered if there was fire where the lightning struck. The sudden fear that lightning might strike near him caused him to gasp sharply and inhale a few raindrops. He was on top of a mountain of metal so maybe it wasn’t unlikely. He should have been more afraid of the potential immediate death of the jolt, but instead he pictured fire. Maybe fire wasn’t done with him. Maybe it wouldn’t be satisfied until _everyone_ in his family was consumed. Imagining fire was almost as terrifying as the thunder that crunched the air around him, reminding him of the sound of old tree trunks snapping.

       His fears carried his mind away. He carried his body away.

       More lightning was filling the sky. It was demanding to be hidden from.

       Nezumi stared around to find a safe place to do so. It surprised him when he saw he was in a neighborhood now. It was a wealthy one with hedges, rose gardens and entire second-floor balconies to overlook them. There was no way the junkyard was anywhere near here. It was almost inconceivable that Nezumi would be here either, but it didn’t matter now. He had to hide or the lightning would set him on fire, he was sure of it.

       He ran and ran until he found a small metal gate between lines of hedge. It was difficult to climb due to the rain. Once he reached the top he hurled himself over the sharp barbs at the top. He wasn’t quite high enough so the barbs dug into the skin of his hip as he passed over them. Stepping stones on the other side of the fence rushed up to greet his bare forearms and crack against his forehead. When they moved away again -- or rather, when he lifted himself up from them -- the world was rippling and the rocks and grass were bloody. But not for long. The rain was heavy and washed everything clean before his swimming eyes.

       The men who’d chased him earlier had tried to do exactly what he’d just done to himself. They wanted his blood. They wanted to throw him, to concuss him, to leave him laying on the ground shivering. Nezumi hadn’t let them do most of that. Yes, they got a lot of his blood to leave him, but most of it had come from his knuckles when he punched them in their ugly faces. It was upsetting to think that he was giving them what they wanted now.

        _Splsh_.

       For a moment Nezumi thought it was another thunderclap he’d heard. This noise hadn’t been so loud the rain was hushed, it was simply close enough that Nezumi heard it. He raised his face in the direction and tensed.

       Half of a pale face with a wide brown eye was staring at him from around the corner of a garden hedge. He couldn't see the rest of the person it was attached to. Maybe there was no person and this was all they were. If this had been a person they’d have yelled at Nezumi by now for bloodying their perfect property, even though the rain diluted the blood so much nobody would see it.

       Nezumi tried to push himself upright but he only managed to get to his elbows. His head was spinning too much to get the rest of the way up. If he tried he’d end up falling back onto the stone and hurting it even worse.

       In the form -- or forms -- of a doubled blur, the person revealed they did have a body and used it to step out from around the hedge. They approached Nezumi quickly and he heard more splashing.

       “Stay away,” he hissed but it must have been too quiet under the rain to be heard, or this stranger simply ignored it. His cheek was being touched so he flinched away from whatever had touched him and tried to focus his gaze on it.

       It was small, the hand of a child, maybe even another seven year old. This hand had flowers growing through the flesh of it, but these flowers all appeared to be dry, brown and curling in on themselves. More flowers like this wrapped around the stranger child’s throat and dipped under their wet sweater.

       Nezumi didn't flinch away from the hand that touched his cheek this time. He was too busy trying to remember what flowers that looked like this meant. They tormented him every night for nearly a year, but in his surprise to see some so close to his face he forgot their meaning.

       He heard the stranger, a boy, whisper, “You’re losing a lot of blood. We need to get you inside or you might die,” and then it all clicked together.

       Death. He’d seen flowers like these during the night of his life he’d experienced the most of it.

       Nezumi raised his eyes to the wide and soft brown eyes of the other boy and saw a confusing mess of emotions inside them. There was maybe some hope, as he could see by the way his lips attempted to curl into a smile, but that smile was restrained by the fear and the worry that furrowed his brows and kept his body tense. Emotions rain and paleness aside, the boy had a cute and warm face. It sharply contrasted Nezumi’s face which he knew must have been cold. Every time Nezumi saw his reflection it was surprisingly cold. He could have tried to see himself in the boy’s dark eyes, but he was more interested in seeing them for themself. It was strange to think that someone with such kind eyes would never meet their soulmate.

       Nezumi allowed the boy to help him into his feet if only because he pitied him. The flowers were all still firmly rooted in the boy’s flesh even with the rain beating against them. This meant his soulmate had probably only died a few hours ago. Had he even fully processed that? Was he in more pain than Nezumi was at the moment?

       The doe-eyed, death-covered boy offered Nezumi an even wider smile. Maybe it was meant to reassure him, but it didn't. It was creepy.

       He was lead into the kitchen of the boy’s big house and left shivering on the wooden floor while the boy returned to the front door to slam it shut.

       The lights in the house were off. Maybe the storm had knocked out the power. It didn’t matter much because even though it was night and a storm was raging, light was filtering in through the house’s many windows from the near constant lightning. Nezumi could see pictures on the walls of a boy -- the very boy who’d brought him here -- and a woman who looked a lot like him.

       Footsteps sounded behind him, approaching him, and then they stopped. After a few moments of silence, the boy with the dead bond flowers whispered, “Don’t die.”

       Nezumi let out a bitter laugh. If only people could promise such a thing.

       “Do you think you can you walk on your own?”

       “Yeah,” he answered slowly and tried to push himself back up to his feet, but found he couldn't and collapsed again. He’d just been running so it angered him that even getting up was suddenly too much to ask of his body. Through gritted teeth he admitted, “No. I can’t.”

       “That’s okay.” The boy’s damp hands were under his arms a moment later. Nezumi flinched away from the touch again and this time the other boy did too. But after his pause he continued to loop his hands under Nezumi’s arms and pull him up off the floor with a groan.

       Nezumi was too weak to even stay balanced and fell against the shorter boy, who allowed it. He was lead out of the kitchen into a living room with a white carpet floor. He looked down and behind him at the bloody footprints he stained it with.

       “I’m going to get my mom,” The boy told him as he helped Nezumi ease onto a soft couch. “Stay right here.”

       In those few moments where he stepped back from Nezumi before turning away, Nezumi observed the strange boy. He wasn’t so very frightening with his whole face visible. In fact he looked far more scared than Nezumi currently felt now that he wasn't afraid of being lit on fire. He wore a sweater far too big for him which with sleeves that hung down past his hands. His hair was dark and thick, probably brown but it looked black because of the the way the rain slicked it down against his head.

       Like Nezumi’s trail of blood, the boy left a trail of water when he turned to dash over to the carpeted stairs up. He scampered up them on all fours.

       Nezumi was alone with the pictures on the walls and the abundance of potted and hanging plants. It was a grueling mental battle to keep himself rooted to the couch, but even if he lost that fight his body would probably put up a better one. Sleep felt so much more appealing now that he was surrounded by soft things.

       “Don’t sleep,” he heard a woman way with a voice that was simultaneously stern and gentle. It confounded Nezumi enough to crack one eye open and stare into another set of gentle doe eyes.

       Before Nezumi examined her he looked to the boy who’d found him. He saw on the carpet a few feet behind the woman, watching Nezumi unblinkingly. In his arms was another large sweater that was falling free of its folding.

       Nezumi looked at the sanitized wipes and gauze in the woman’s hands next and mumbled, “Do I have to stay awake for this?”

       “You have a head injury,” the woman said with a tilt of her head. It was a pretty head. She was the woman from the pictures Nezumi had glimpsed during the lightning strikes, an adult and female version of her son. He wondered if he’d take after her as strongly when he was an adult as he did as a child.

       “So?” Nezumi said with a squint.

       “It’s common knowledge that if you sleep while concussed you might never wake up,” the other boy said almost robotically. “Concussions are when you hurt your head bad.”

       “Something like that,” the woman said and offered Nezumi the same kind of reassuring smile her son had. She gestured to herself with the gauze still in her hand and said, “My name is--”

       “I don’t care,” Nezumi interrupted with narrowed his eyes. He brushed the bangs out of his forehead so the cuts and bruises or whatever was there could be easily seen. “Does this look concussion bad?”

       “Th-that’s not exactly-- I don’t know. We’ll need to take you to a doctor to know that.”

       Nezumi let his bangs drop only for the woman to brush them aside again a moment later to dab the wounds with disinfectant. He hissed, partly because it stung and partly because he didn’t like how she shared her son’s habit of touching him without warning.

       She continued to do that a lot, always very tenderly though. Sometimes she’d ask if Nezumi could turn his arm or raise his knee so she could reach certain places or wrap gauze around other places more easily. She dawned a peaceful smile after a while. This was a familiar smile, even though she was an unfamiliar person. It mesmerized Nezumi and allowed him to focus on something else besides her son’s constant nervous but hopeful chatter.

       Before long, the son’s chatter was easy to ignore, and the mother’s smile was hard to focus on. Despite their repeated warnings and occasional jostlings, Nezumi did nod off. It was impossible not to. This was one of the most comfortable and warm places he’d found himself in months and he hadn’t gotten more than a few hours of sleep in several days. And even though he didn’t even know the names of those he was surrounded by, he could tell they meant him no harm. If anything the woman reminded him of his own mother, which was part of why he was so determined to be aloof to her. His mother was dead and no one was allowed to be compared to her.

       Her smile had been as bright as the moonlight that reflected off the koi fish pond in their garden, the one Nezumi stared out his window at every night. Sometimes it was because of his mother he’d been watching it; she liked to throw food for the koi every night just as the sun was setting, but sometimes her work kept her for longer. She had been a doctor. As a doctor, she probably knew all about concussions. Surely she’d have been able to tell just by looking at Nezumi’s head if he had one. If she was here, she’d tell him with assurance that he was able to safely fall asleep. That he was able to attempt to dream happy things about her and his father and his little sister.

       Somewhere far away, one soft surface Nezumi was touching was replaced with something else. The new one like skin and cloth. Then he felt like he was being moved. But here Nezumi sat in his bedroom window. He could hear his sister brushing her teeth behind him. Moonlight was already reflecting off the koi fish pond, but his mother hadn’t come to feed them yet. So tonight was a busy one. It was such a busy one. He could tell by the shouting. He became less and less sure as the shouting became screaming, as the light that danced off the pond shifted from a blueish white to a blazing orange, and suddenly he smelled smoke.

       He never got to see his mother’s smile that night.

 

❀❀❀

 

       “Poor thing,” he heard his mother’s sigh from the hallway.

       Shion hesitated to look away from the fragile looking boy who laid under the covers of his mother’s bed. The blanket was pulled right up to his rosy nose. His eyelashes were long thick. Shion liked them a lot. They were the same dark slate as his eyebrows and the inky hair on his head. Something he liked about the boy’s face more than his eyelashes was currently hidden. When he was asleep, his eyes with their silvery electric charge more powerful than the storm outside couldn’t burn into Shion’s skull. It was an invigorating burning, however.

       “Shion?”

       He stared at the boy for a few more seconds before he offered his mother his attention.

       Karan was leaning against the doorframe folding the boy’s wet and bloodied clothes. She’d put him in some of Shion’s for the night and had mumbled to herself about how unsure she was about whether she could save the bloodied ones. When she made eye contact with Shion she said, “How are you feeling?”

       “I’m okay,” he said without missing a beat. It was true, but he’d also become used to saying it ever since that morning. He lost track of how many times he’d had to say it.

       “I mean,” she paused and seemed to be searching for some way to articulate her question. “Maybe we should go down to the kitchen. I’m sure we can safely risk pulling the ice cream out of the freezer without letting everything go bad.”

       “I just brushed my teeth. Again,” Shion reminded her.

       “Third time's the charm then? Come on, I think we need a treat.”

       Shion looked back down at the boy and said, “No thanks. I’m not interested in more ice cream.” He’d seen wounds on the boy’s knuckles that matched his own knuckle wounds, and the wound on his stomach did too, and the wounds on his knees, and several others.

       Karan was standing in front of him soon after he said that. He didn’t look at her until the fingers under his chin slowly turned his head to meet hers. Her eyes were searching as she darted between Shion’s eyes.

       “Hi mom. What are you looking for?”

       His mother swallowed and lowered her hand. “Honey, you… you’ve been through a traumatic thing today. You lost your soulmate this morning and now that this boy is here your mood has completely changed. I’m not sure what you’re thinking.”

       Upon hearing a reminder of his dead soulmate, who was as dead as the flowers that still clung to the breaks in the skin all over his head, Shion's grip tightened around the hem of his shorts. When his eyes dropped to his hands, surprised at his own reaction, he was appalled to see that the flowers were still a crinkling dusty color. Why did that not make any sense to him? Soulmates died. He knew this. He knew what happened to a person’s flowers when their soulmate died of their injuries, he knew, but at the same time his subconscious mind _didn’t_.

       Perhaps his bond flowers were tricky and wanted to lie to him. This sleeping boy shared some of his injuries and he was alive. But of course, these things had no connection so Shion didn’t understand why he thought of that.

       “Is helping this boy a distraction? Are you coping through him?”

       Shion shook his head slowly. He didn’t know. He was seven. Even though he was at the top of his class, he didn’t know how brains worked except that if you hit them hard enough they stopped working. He didn’t want the brain of the boy in his mother’s bed to stop working. His soulmate’s brain had stopped working, although that had probably been after other parts of their body stopped working first.

       He wished his own brain would stop working. He looked back over at the sleeping boy’s sweeping eyelashes, which did the trick. Suddenly his mind was empty and calm. “I don’t know. Maybe? Is it bad if I’m coping through helping him?”

       He wasn’t looking at his mother but he felt her looming presence soften and retreat a little. “I don’t suppose so… But don’t get too attached okay?”

       “Because he hates us?”

       “Not because he hates us.”

       “Because his parents are looking for him?”

       “His parents,” Karan repeated with suspicion lacing her voice.

       Hearing that, Shion looked at his mother with surprise. “You think his parents hurt him?”

       “Oh no, honey, I don’t have any idea who hurt him. We just need to get him to a doctor tomorrow,” she said rushedly. “Maybe he’ll tell us.” She took a step closer to Shion and placed her hands on his shoulders to guide him off of her bed and out of the room. “Let’s let him rest. It’s late and you have school tomorrow.”

       “Where will you sleep?”

       “I’ll kick it on the couch for the night. Don’t worry about me, the bakery is not to reopen for a few days.”

       He allowed her to escort him to his room, where she tucked him in, kissed his forehead and wished him sweet dreams. He wished her specific dreams, dreams where she’d be inspired and come up with a new recipe for her bakery. This was his wish for her every night and she always seemed to love it.

       It was almost an hour later Shion kicked the covers back off and sat upright in the bed, staring at the mirror on the far wall of his room. He could barely recognize the boy who stared back at him, covered in dead flowers and tired eyes.

       He frowned down at the handful of flower petals discarded on his bedsheets. Once again and for maybe the millionth time that day, at least twice as many times as he’d had to say, “I’m okay”, Shion wondered if his flowers were lying to him. Maybe they weren’t really dead and were just trying to scare him.

       The next thing Shion frowned at was the sharpest little knife in the kitchen, level with his eyes in the knife block on the kitchen counter. Then he was back upstairs in the bathroom, having climbed onto the bathroom’s counter, kicking toothpaste tubes, hair brushes and makeup kits onto the tiled floor. He kneeled with one knee in the sink itself and the other resting on the cold marble, frowning more deeply at his own reflection than at anything he’d ever frowned at before.

       He raised the knife with shaking hands, slowly, slowly, up towards his face. When the cold metal touched his cheek he found himself unable to press it any deeper.

       The hairs on his arm were standing on end and he couldn’t stop trembling.

       “It’s just an experiment,” he whispered at the boy in the mirror. “You’ll hurt a little, but you’ll get an answer to a question.” Of course, it was a question he already knew the answer to. Still, he couldn’t trick himself into thinking this experiment was necessary any more than he could could compel himself to stop.

       Lightning illuminated the bathroom once, and then again a minute later, and then again and again until Shion lost track of each strike. He also lost track of how much time passed while locked in a battle of will against wisdom. Finally, during one especially brightly lit moment, one half of him caved to the other.

       He pressed the blade into his cheek and began to carve something unmistakable onto his skin.

 

❀❀❀

 

       The sun was still a few minutes from rising when two people shot up from their beds with teary eyes and heaving chests. The one in a hospital bed blinked his nightmare away and glared around at mint green curtains. Once calm, he dropped back onto the pillows with one hand over his eyes. They were the same color as the eyes of the ghosts he’d dreamed of. Besides the two living ghosts, that is.

       The other was in his own bed. He hadn’t slept in a hospital bed for a few days. He was released as soon as the doctors realized he had gone on an adventure down to the trauma center. It was for the better; Shion knew he’d go look for that man with the inky hair and silver eyes again if he was still there. Every night since the encounter Shion dreamed of the boy from his past who the man reminded him of.

       There was a mirror across the room.

       Just as he had every morning upon waking up, Shion frowned into that mirror like his seven-year-old self had. He stared at the spot on his cheek where he’d began to carve into himself. His eyes scanned his cheek, his neck, and continued to lower along his torso and leg until he was no longer looking at the mirror at all. Instead he looked at the dent where his foot was sticking up from under the covers. All of these places used to have one long winding scar. The wound had never been deep so it had faded completely.

       Shion didn’t have time to dwell on this stuff. He threw the covers off and began his day. It was a weekday and his weekdays had strict schedules. Luckily the nightmare had only woken him a few minutes earlier than his alarm would have.

       He had been working at the Chronos Environmental Lab for several years, since before he finished getting all of his degrees at college. It was located on the edge of N’Soix city which was built right beside a sprawling mountainous forest. Shion ventured into that forest all the time to collect samples. His job’s purpose was to make sure things were growing healthy and strong and to know immediately if the city’s crops or were at risk of becoming diseased. Safu often claimed that his job sounded boring, but Shion adored it.

       As soon as his shift at the lab came to an end, which was usually at four, he spent the rest of his day doing something else he adored: helping his mother with the bakery. He’d been doing that ever since he was a kid and had practically been raised in a kitchen. He hoped to grow old in this same kitchen too.

       Today was a fun day in Karan’s Bakery, one where Shion and her had not hit any snags. He’d never gotten hurt, by his soulmate’s injuries or otherwise. The two played music and danced while they baked.

       The sun was setting and Shion’s mind was far from the silver-eyed stranger he’d seen in the hospital or the child he’d met in his garden. The only silver on his mind was the silverware he was washing in the sink. It was a race to finish washing, drying and resetting them back out in the front for the guests before the scones in the oven finished baking. Shion was losing this race.

       The oven dinged right as Shion placed the last damp spoon onto the drying towel.

       He didn’t refrain from casting the oven a disdainful look, one that unfortunately ended up being cast at his mother too.

       She burst through the flapping kitchen door with dirty plates in her hands and a big grin that withered upon seeing the look on Shion’s face.

       “At the oven,” he offered vaguely but was too busy getting its metal door open to fret about how to elaborate further.

       Elaborating didn’t matter. Karan seemed to understand and returned to smiling widely. “That new theatre’s been getting us a lot of business lately, hm?”

       Shion carefully pulled the pan of scones from the oven. The mention of the theatre gave him enough pause that he began to feel the heat of the pan through his oven mitts. He’d heard that guard in the hospital mention the theatre to the ink-haired man in the wheelchair.

       “I hope we can catch one of their shows. We deserve a night nice of escapism and dressing up.”

       “I can pay for us,” he offered.

       She waved his suggestion away like it was a gnat. “No honey, don’t you worry. It’s not overly expensive. In fact, it’s become a little cheaper since one of the actors got in an accident of some kind, not that I’m happy about that. Right on opening night too. Tragic.”

       Shion nodded and placed the scones on the drying rack. He returned to the last undried spoon then began to place handfuls of silverware into their spots in a tray he’d be taking the silverware back to the front inside.

       His mother eased in beside him and pushed him gently towards the marionberry paste for a pie he’d started earlier. “Don’t worry about this. I’ll handle it. You finish that paste.”

       He did as she asked. While he worked on the paste, which was too sweet and not quite thick enough yet, he wondered about the theatre some more. “How did the actor get hurt?”

       “I haven’t heard. The understudy is quite good too, but apparently many of the repeat customers are hoping to see that first actor again.” She picked up the tray, now full of clinking silverware, and began to leave. Before she passed through the flapping door to the front room she added, “Maybe he’ll be back by the next play.”

       Shion watched the door flapping for a moment, and then tasted the paste again. This time he was satisfied. It was thick, the marionberries were unmashed enough that most still burst between his teeth, and it was the right amount of sweet. He was proud of himself. He rarely ever figured out a pie’s paste so quickly.

       Karan announced her presence with a, “How’s that paste coming?” as she reentered the kitchen.

       Shion turned back to her, pointed at the paste and grinned, “Already got it down.”

       His mother never stopped smiling. She turned up the music as her favorite song came on and got to work on another pie’s paste. The mother and son babbled about a few different things throughout the rest of the night, bobbing about in place while they focused on their creations. Shion’s mind sometimes returned to the theatre, and now when he saw silverware he _did_ think of the stranger’s eyes.

 

❀❀❀

 

       The first thing Nezumi noticed about his manager’s brand new limousine was how she’d already managed to infuse the leather seating with the overwhelming smell of her perfume. The chemicals were too strong for him to even tell what scent the perfume was supposed to be. Surely she could afford better perfume now that she could cover his medical bills, buy and renovate a theatre in a prime real estate spot in the middle of an affluent city, and even hire herself two bodyguards. One of them doubled as her chauffeur and closed the door behind Nezumi.

       The bodyguards pissed the slate-haired boy off more than anything. He thought being released from the hospital meant he would be escaping the watch of private guards, not doubling it.

       He watched the hospital through the limousine’s tinted windows until it was out of his view. Then he looked over at madame manager Fei.

       She had gotten a makeover. Her hair was now styled in a neat black bob and her nails were long and painted red and white. Words were spilling through her shriveled cherry-colored lips but Nezumi had heard more than enough of them already and didn’t want to listen. She hadn’t stopped ranting since he’d met up with her in the hospital lobby. First it was about how a sizeable percentage of customers only seemed interested in the shows because of Nezumi. The Night’s Dream’s sales were suffering now that people thought he wouldn’t be coming back. If only to imagine her reaction, Nezumi fantasized about running away to a different theatre and letting her deal with her losses. After that, the manager ranted about how furious she was that she hadn’t been allowed to visit him despite being “the closest person to a mother Nezumi ever had” and funding his recovery.

       “I mean, truly, I wish I could ring that guard’s wide neck!” she fumed while cooling herself with a paper fan, even though it was night now and would be getting cold soon. “Who does he think he is, turning me away, humiliating me even after I plead my case so well to the hospital staff.”

       Nezumi hadn’t heard about this before.

       “Really, the one who should have been escorted from the premise was him, not me!”

       He kept his expression neutral. “You didn’t hire him?”

       She pouted, “No but I would have! I mean, not him, but someone. Those fans of yours are quite something. But _I 've had_  the idea since the moment they took you away in the ambulance. Someone must have overheard my plan and hired you a bodyguard first.”

       Nezumi doubted that. If anything, she’d hired herself guards after her encounter with the hospital guard. He also doubted it was a fan who hired the man. That didn’t make any sense. Madame manager Fei told him she wasn’t letting news of the stabbing leave the theatre; outsiders thought Nezumi’s injuries were caused by a random accident.

       His dwelling on the topic was interrupted by a thick script being shoved into his lap by the tiny woman.

       “I’ve already got a few ideas of who to cast you as and highlighted the lines I’d like to you read for the upcoming auditions.”

       “Which are when?”

       “A few weeks off but I know how you are, either all or nothing. I expect you to be _all_ this time. Keep in mind, however, that we have just under a week left of Hades and Persephone which you _will_ be resuming your role in.” She looked proud of herself and snapped her fan shut to scour the passenger compartment for something.

       Nezumi watched her warily. His shoulder was still sore but he figured should be able to act. Hades didn’t dance or move quickly and all of his props were light so he doubted the role could cause his injury stress.

       Finally the manager pulled a bottle of red wine from a fold-up cushion and unpopped the cork with one swift motion. She drank right out of the bottle and cackled about how genius her tweaks to the upcoming play were, so Nezumi tuned her out again throughout the rest of the ride.

       He didn’t miss the smell of perfume even after as he exited the limo and it was replaced with smoke and rust and other chemicals. He didn’t miss the warmth or cushiony seats it provided even as it drove off and left him standing in the cold on a curbside in the filthiest part of the city.

       Nezumi lived in Lostblock, the only part of N’Soix that didn’t live up to the rest of the city’s standards. It was a junkyard for people. The only maintained buildings were the industrial plants which pumped smoke into the sky. He walked along cracked sidewalks and collapsed chain link fences, through metal-scrap littered fields of dead grass, until he finally reached his little apartment building. It sat under a crisscrossing raised highway and nearby a train track. The only functioning street lamp anywhere near the building was dim and cast orange light that constantly flickered.

       He stood in front of the door to the apartment with his hands at his sides. He didn’t have his key. It didn’t dissuade him though; Nezumi knew how to pick a lock. Almost no extra time had to be spent on finding the right things to pick it with before his apartment door was closed behind him.

       It was an uninviting apartment and he knew it, but it was his. There were a bathroom and the main room. It had a kitchenette in one corner, a loveseat in another, a mattress on the floor with ratty blankets, and several rows of bookshelves which took up almost all of the room’s space. The only light came from that flickering street lamp outside.

       He weaved through the bookshelves towards the mattress but paused when he heard a few squeaks.

       Three little rats of different colors were perched in a gap in the books on a shelf, watching him.

       He took a detour to the kitchenette, where he poured some dog food into a bowl and set that on the floor.

       The rats flocked to it instantly.

       He sighed and offered one, the brown one, a pat before he left them alone. These rats weren’t exactly his pets. He didn’t really know what they were to him, besides that they weren’t pests either. They never left any messes or droppings anywhere in his apartment, never bit him, and only ever seemed affectionate of him.

       He made his way over to the mattress and resisted the urge to drop onto it to avoid aggravating his shoulder. He settled for lowering himself slowly.

       The soft squeaking of rats and the flickering of the streetlamp outside faded into quiet and darkness before long. He was alone with his mind. Or rather, he was at the mercy of it. Part of him wanted to be visited by the two brown eyed ghosts again rather than the silver eyed ones. While frightening, dreams of the boy and his mom were pleasant compared to the dreams of losing his family. But another part of him was more scared of him than them. He worried he’d fall deeper into this blooming obsession with the bakery boy.

 

❀❀❀

       He was only seven years old and in such bad pain he wanted to die. It hurt so much that Nezumi couldn’t believe it had all been a dream.

       His screaming had been quieted. Not because his reason for screaming was gone, but because the smoke wouldn’t let him scream anymore. His lungs couldn’t collect the air necessary for it, much less for breathing.

       There were many reasons he wanted to keep screaming. They were stinking and bubbling and burning all around him. Even behind him. Even on him. He was one of these stinking bubbling burning things. His back was ablaze but he was as helpless to put himself out as everyone else had been. Of course, it was a natural human thing to scream when in incredible pain, but Nezumi wasn’t sure that was the main reason he wanted to. That would be the bodies. Several of them lay scattered in the blazing underbrush around the tree he was in. Some were completely charred and unrecognizable. Some were still wet. One was very small and directly beneath him, crumpled in the tree’s roots with hands that were slippery with blood that didn’t belong to it. That body stared up at him with empty eyes that reflected the burning canopy.

       The fire hadn’t let him escape without pain. It barely let him escape at all. All of the warmth and joy in his life had been taken by it, except for the overpowering warmth Nezumi associated with pain.

       Nezumi was waking up. Strangely, a new kind of warmth was encompassing him. Or maybe it was an old kind, one he’d forgotten about. This warmth felt kind and comforting, much unlike that he’d experienced in his dream. He suddenly realized it had hurt so much because it hadn’t been a dream at all.

       The warmth breezed against his forehead and Nezumi smelled toothpaste. His mother’s breath often smelled like toothpaste too. But he didn’t want to think about that. He could replace the association of her toothpaste breath with this warmth’s breath instead. That would make everything so much easier.

       He leaned into it until he was resting his forehead against something. It was stable. That was good. That meant this wasn’t a ghost because people supposedly went right through ghosts. He was sure he was crying so he wasn’t surprised when he adjusted his face and felt something damp against his cheek. But when he opened his eyes a little he saw the dampness was bright red.

       Besides that the dampness was apparently blood, not tears, Nezumi came to understand that this warmth was a person. He was sitting upright in a strange bed in what appeared to be a woman’s room. He was also hugging a stranger who was roughly his size, probably another child. This stranger was sitting right beside him with sweater-sleeve clad arms wrapped around Nezumi’s shaking shoulders. Their cheek rested on the top of his head and he felt more of their breath tickling the tip of one of his ears. When he looked down he saw he was wearing a new pair of shorts and a freshly bloodied t-shirt that almost fit him. They must have been the other boy’s.

       Nezumi knew he should have been tense about being so close to anyone, considering everyone he knew was dead, but instead he was relieved. His breathing became calmer and slower. He allowed himself to close his eyes again. He listened to the storm outside, and then to the toothpaste-scented breathing of the warm stranger. Then he adjusted his face again until his ear was against the person’s chest so that he could try listening for the stranger’s heartbeat. They had one. It was fast but it was there which was more proof they were not a ghost.

       “What was your nightmare about?” Nezumi heard the words reverberating inside the person’s chest. It was strange how quietly the words sounded in the air when they felt so loud against his head.

       He didn’t want to answer. Talking would break the peaceful spell he was under.

       “When you started crying I thought…”

       The room filled with silence except for the pattering of rain against the windows. Nezumi didn’t know how long the storm had been going, but the rain was still strong. He did understand, finally, that he was back in that brown-eyed boy’s house where he and his mother had cleaned him up from his fight. He didn’t mind that right now though.

       The warm stranger who must have been the boy inhaled in a way that felt like he had put effort into remaining quiet, but since Nezumi had his head to the boy’s chest he heard it through him. “...I thought it might be my fault. I’m really sorry if it is. Or even if it isn’t.”

       Why would someone be sorry for something they didn’t do? What a ridiculous way of thinking.

       “I made a mistake.”

       “Stop talking,” Nezumi mumbled. “You’re louder inside than you are outside.”

       The boy obeyed. His breathing still sounded very deliberate for a while, still attempting to be quiet. Eventually it became more natural as his heartbeat slowed to what Nezumi figured must have been normal.

      When Nezumi opened his eyes again and saw more blood dying the front of the boy’s sweater a dark crimson, he was awake enough to find that unsettling. But he didn’t want to move away from this comforting warm person just yet. As far as he could tell, being unsettling and comforting at the same time was just a normal trait for this boy. And besides, this was the safest he’d felt and the closest he’d been to anyone in almost a year. If he moved now, he worried it would be the last time he ever felt this way.

       “You’re warm,” the boy whispered.

       “And you’re not very good at doing what people tell you to do,” Nezumi countered with a snicker. When the boy remained quiet, Nezumi added more mildly, “It’s okay though. I was thinking that about you too.”

       “That I’m warm?”

       The damp sweater rubbed against the side of his face when Nezumi nodded.

       “...I’m glad you think so. But I don’t _feel_ warm.”

       “You obviously don't know anything about not being warm, your majesty.”

       "Your majesty?"

       "You practically live in a castle. Figure it out."

       The boy didn't seem to have anything to say to that so he just sighed onto the top of Nezumi’s head.

       Nezumi scanned around the room. The storm outside had lessened to only wind and rain without any lightning so he had a hard time seeing the subjects of the photographs wedged into the vanity mirror or hung from the wall. He was sure some were of the boy he was hugging. He wondered if the boy had any other parents aside from his mother.

       “My…” the boy started with a croaky voice. He paused and swallowed. Nezumi thought for a moment if he’d asked aloud about his other parent without realizing and if the boy meant to answer him, but then the boy continued, “My soulmate really is dead.”

       Nezumi remembered when he’d hit his head on the ground earlier, and seen the boy’s blurred and doubled form step out from behind the rose bushes in his garden. He had seen lightning strike in the distance behind him and encircle the boy with white rim lighting which also revealed the bumpy shapes of flowers growing from various places around his body. These were places where Nezumi had been hurt too, but they didn’t perfectly match Nezumi’s injuries. Besides, he’d later seen the flowers were wilted and crumpling off the boy. He didn't like remembering that. He remembered dead flowers too often about enough people already.

       “They're dead and I’m just now wrapping my head around it,” the boy continued very quietly, tickling the top of Nezumi’s ear with his mint breath. “I’m never going to meet them. That’s why I don't feel warm.”

       “Soulmates aren’t the only reason to feel warm.”

       The other boy let out a single laugh, but it sounded a bit weepy.

       Not keen on getting snot globs on his head, Nezumi finally began to lean away from the other boy. He’d hugged him for so long that the blood oozing through his sweater made an unsticking noise as Nezumi moved away. He could feel some against his cheek.

       The boy loosely slid his fingers around Nezumi’s hands, scared to let him go too far.

       Nezumi didn’t. He simply sat upright. He would have been face to face with the other boy if he wasn’t just a smidge taller. He didn’t look at his face yet though, he was more interested in the drying blood that had oozed through the chest area of his sweater. The darkest areas seemed to wrap all the way around the boy’s body, even going around one of his legs. Blood was staining the baby blue sheets of his mother’s bed. Nezumi wasn’t sure if the boy would even care if he noticed it.

       “Your soulmate can’t be dead,” Nezumi said as he stared at the injuries. “These are fresher than the ones from earlier tonight.” He even offered a smile in his utter disbelief and laughed, “Your soulmate’s a fighter.”

       “Your eyes look so different when you’re laughing,” he heard the boy remark with amazement on his voice.

       “I’m just impressed.”

       “You shouldn’t be.”

       Confused, Nezumi raised his eyes to the boy’s face and his awe fell away.

       The boy’s eyes were teary and half-lidded, and they kept looking away at other things in the room. He was scared to make eye contact with Nezumi. The bloody wound that rose up from the collar of the sweater, curled around his neck and came to a stop on his cheek had no flowers blooming from it.

       “Wait. I didn’t do this to you did I?” Nezumi breathed and raised a hand towards the boy’s cheek. His hand with its bruised knuckles was shaking when it came into view. He dropped it quickly.

       “ _I_ did this,” the boy said.

       “ _Why_?” and Nezumi looked him up and down again.

       The wounds seemed to have been made with a knife. It was a sloppy job. Some areas had long and deep winding cuts where the most blood had come from. Some of these areas were still bleeding, dripping down onto the boy’s lap. Nezumi even saw some streaks of blood had slid down his own arms. Other areas looked more like shallow and overlapping chicken scratches. These seemed like areas the boy had a harder time reaching, like the back of his neck.

       “I - I thought… I don’t know,” the boy mumbled. “I thought if I did this maybe you’d have the same marks. We have the same marks. We…” His brown eyes were trained on Nezumi’s bruised knuckles while he raised his own hand and showed Nezumi the dead flowers that had bloomed through the skin. Regardless of whether they were dead or not, the boy’s soulmate really was a fighter. They had died fighting.

       Nezumi narrowed his eyes when he realized why the boy had done what he had.

       “I’m sorry.”

       The silver-haired boy shook his head and climbed down from the bed. It strained the injuries to his ribs and caused him to buckle and wheeze into the soft carpet. He didn’t know what the boy said in response to this, but he was sure something had been said. When he regained control of his body, he found the boy was kneeling over him and talking soothingly into his ear. Nezumi shoved him away.

       He was thrown into his mother’s nearby desk chair and gasped sharply and then held it, watching Nezumi with wide eyes.

       Nezumi drew his hand back towards his body defensively, scanning the desk chair for more blood and the boy for any new injuries. He hadn’t meant to hurt him. It was just hard to be in control when he was so hurt himself. He clung to the bed’s frame and dragged himself back onto his wobbly legs.

       “You have to lie back down. You’re still hurt.”

       “No, I have to go,” Nezumi told him. He felt no bitterness towards the boy who had hoped that by cutting himself he would cut Nezumi too. Nezumi wanted to be upset, but instead he just felt sad that the boy had betrayed him in such a way. For awhile there he had Nezumi under the impression that the boy was an entirely good person, one who just wanted what was best for a total stranger. Of course such people didn’t exist.

       He had also been wrong to think that this boy wasn’t a ghost. He was. Losing his soulmate and being denied a replacement had obviously broken him.

       Just as ghosts did, the boy remained quiet throughout Nezumi’s “escape”, if it could even be called that. He followed Nezumi around the house with those tearful eyes, helping him collect things to better survive out in the world. Nezumi grabbed more of the boy’s clothes, one of his old backpacks, and as much food as he could fit in those backpacks. By the time he was heading out the gate, which the stranger boy opened for him, the rain was very light.

       Nezumi never looked back at the boy as he left. He had been too numb too. But since he hadn’t, or maybe even if he had, leaving the boy standing in the rain like that without a word felt weird to Nezumi. Maybe if he had said something, he wouldn’t have thought about him every day since then to drown out all the other ghosts.

 

❀❀❀

        

       Shion had no idea how long he stood shivering in front of the metal gate.

       The rain came to a stop. The sky cleared enough that Shion could tell that the stars were beginning to fade and the sun would be rising soon.

       Sometimes he looked around. Early morning birds flitted through the garden and he’d watch them. Or he’d watch as dead petals pooled around his bare feet. He felt nothing about the death of his soulmate at the moment. Instead he just wanted the silver-eyed boy to come back. He’d wait as long as it took for him to return to the iron gate and be let back inside.

       The last thing they’d said to each other wasn’t meaningful. Shion couldn’t even remember what he’d said, but he knew the other boy had simply told him he was leaving. That wasn’t right, they should have said “goodbye” or “see you later” or something. Shion had wanted to but his throat had failed him ever since the boy had discovered his purpose for harming himself. He could still see the way his eyes had shifted back to distrust after chuckling with amazement and congratulating him on his soulmate’s revival. In that moment of happiness, the boy’s eyes had instantly become Shion’s favorite thing to look at. If only that moment could have lasted forever.

       “Shion!” he heard his mother’s gasp from the front door.

       He didn’t move. He’d been staring out the iron gate at the cobblestone road since the rising sun had started to peek through the mist.

       His mother’s hands wrapped around his shoulders. She spun his tiny body until he was facing her and then hugged him tightly. She was trembling even more than he was despite him standing outside since the other boy’s departure. When she finally parted herself from him, she stiffened.

       “He’s gone,” he told her to explain.

       Her expression should have been anger or horror, but instead Shion witnessed growing delight. She lead him back into the house without a word. He was guided into the upstairs bathroom, the one with the big mirror. It was still bloody and the kitchen knife lay on the counter with bits of his skin still embedded in its ridges. Shion hadn’t bothered to clean up after himself. He knew he’d have to explain himself to his mother one way or another and didn’t know how to properly sterilize a knife.

       “I’m sorry,” he whispered quietly. He hung his head in shame.

       “It’s not about the cutting,” she responded. “We will talk about that, though. First we talk about,” and she lifted him up onto the counter so he could see himself instead of just the top of his head. She supported him by his waist and nodded at his reflection, “This.”

       He first looked back at the dirty knife which was now by his feet. It brought feelings of pain, and feelings of hope that turned out to be misleading. Then he raised his eyes, meaning to look up at the cut on his cheek, but instead his eyes landed on his knuckles. The flowers that grew from between the bones were not dry and dust-colored, they were alive and white as they always were before yesterday. His soulmate really _had_ come back to life.

 

❀❀❀

 

       It was the last night of the theatre’s second play, just over a month after Karan’s bakery had been flooded with happy theatregoing customers from the first one. One of their frequent customers bought them tickets to this play as a gift for Karan’s birthday, right after she and Shion had resigned to not getting tickets to this play after all.

       Turns out the theatre was just up the road. It was brand new and in a prime spot for business, right at the corner of broadway and across the street from the city’s biggest park. The way the front lit up at night was stunning and had been drawing Shion to it for weeks ever since he finally found it.

       Now Shion finally stood in the grand entry room, dressed in a rented suit and marveling with his mother at the glamorous baroque architecture and murals painted on the vaulted ceiling above the chandelier. It was also fun to watch the theatergoers flit about with their expensive concession stand treats, fancy dresses and masquerade masks. The whole place felt like another world altogether, making Shion and his mother feel like awkward gawking aliens.

       This time the theatre, known as Night’s Dream, would be performing a play based on the story Sleeping Beauty. It wasn't a story either baker was familiar with. Shion wished he hadn't eavesdropped on nearby children discussing the sketchy things that happened to the sleeping princess in the original story because now he was slightly afraid to see the play. But he also doubted a place so magical would choose an awful play so he decided to trust the theatre.

       When it was time for the guests to file into the seating arena, Shion gasped at the thousands of red seats sprawled about and stacked up the walls. How anyone could do anything with so many eyes on them confounded him.

        It seemed Karan and her soulmate were not the only ones who felt that seeing a play could be a romantic date experience. There were couples everywhere, leaning on each other's shoulders, matching each other’s strides as they moved up the aisles with their hands entwined, giggling in their balcony seats as they peered at each other through magnifying glasses, and doing all sorts of happy couple things. It made Shion wonder if his mother had been that happy with her soulmate when he took her to see Don Quixote. He hoped so, but a tiny bitter thing inside him also hoped her soulmate wasn't happy anymore. People often said that when one chooses a life apart from their soulmate, they never are happy, but Shion, nor Safu, nor even Karan believed that. For endangering his mother, however, Shion still had a little bit of hope that it was true at least for her soulmate.

       Shion and his mother's seats were right in the middle of the ground audience. The two had only just started looking through the booklet describing the theatre, play and cast when the lights finally dimmed and the orchestra began to play something soft and lilting.

       Everything was magic. Shion was awed and enraptured by the story and the beautiful sets and costumes in moments.

       The fairies were endearing in their own ways and he and Karan were whispering which ones were their favorites just minutes after they were introduced. The full-grown actor playing as the baby princess had the audience, including Shion, in fits of laughter. The evil fairy witch was chilling and Shion wasn't sure if he pitied or despised her. The prince was just okay. Shion was usually too busy admiring the backgrounds and background characters of his scenes to pay him much attention.

       His captivation with the play itself was abruptly ended when the curtains rose on act two. Now it belonged entirely to that _someone_ the curtains revealed.

       There in the middle of the stage with a forested backdrop, standing still and singing a hopeful tune, was the princess. She had been reintroduced as an adult, a different actor from the baby. An actor with a haunting voice like a siren’s and equally ghostly silver eyes that drifted somberly over the crowd. This actor’s eyes became still when they met Shion’s. They were silver. They were the same eyes as the boy Shion had met during the storm, the one he’d scared away by hurting himself. And his voice, though not singing before, was the same one of the man in the hospital. The voice became quieter and quieter until it broke and the actor began to choke silently.

       Shion was choking too.

       The actor took a shaky step back and then collapsed onto one knee. Blood was leaking from his mouth, just a drop at first, then more and more, until it was streaming out and pooling at his knees. He didn't react to the blood though. He was concentrating on Shion’s eyes. His own had quickly became icy with a hatred Shion couldn't bear to see and couldn't understand.

       Shion’s mouth tasted of corroded metal and salt. Blood spilled over his bottom lip and warmed his jaw. His ribcage and everything inside it was a raging ripping mess. It hurt in such a way Shion would have been convinced he was about to die any instant if he didn't know what was happening. It was a good thing. Right? It had to be. He’d always looked forward to it. Or so he wanted to remind himself. But reminders of how he used to feel about choking up flowers weren't working. He just wanted the pain to end.

       People were rushing about and probably screaming, but Shion didn’t care. That was all a haze obstructed by the ringing in Shion’s ears and a focus on the actor kneeling the stage. Let the rest of the world blur into nothing and muteness.

       Someone started to jostle Shion. He was lifted out of his seat. He only noticed because he had to move his head in order to keep eye contact with the actor, but that became even more difficult when people rushed onto the stage to grab him too.

       Without being able to concentrate on the actor, Shion was consumed and maddened by the grueling weight that was tearing him apart from the inside out. He could feel something rising slowly through his insides. How living creatures were supposed to survive such a terrible, painful experience was baffling. But they always did, he reminded himself. He could see Safu rolling her eyes at him as she had the last time she’d reminded him of such. This was never fatal. There were never complications.

       Black curtains were cast aside by the person carrying him.

       Shion wondered if he could distract himself from the pain with anyone beside his soulmate. He tried to turn his head and focus on who was carrying him. It was the underwhelming actor who had played the prince. He wasn’t wearing his wig and instead had long black hair that was much more interesting. Beside him was a tall woman in the crew’s uniform and she was guiding his stunned mother along, attempting to calm her.

       Once he was backstage, Shion saw the cast and the crew forming a makeshift bed of blankets, pillows, couch cushions and other soft looking things. Some of the actors and crewmembers were settling down beside the bed, shifting through a pair of first aid kits until they pulled out two electric heating pads. Supposedly those could ease the pain a little.

       His attention was taken from all that by the silver-eyed actor once again. He was also being carried backstage in the arms of other staff members of the Night’s Dream. His eyes were screwed shut from the pain and he was holding his breath.

       The two boys were laid right beside each other on the makeshift bed. Shion could feel the skin of the actor’s -- his _soulmate’s_ \-- pinkie against his own. It was slick with sweat but warm, so warm.

       A group of strangers stood over the two. Their eyes were darting between them and their mouths were moving quickly and widely while they shouted silently. Most looked scared but some looked happy. Karan looked vacant and her eyes remained glued on Shion.

       He didn’t know how to comfort her. He didn’t know how to comfort himself. Maybe if he looked at his soulmate again the pain might lessen. It didn’t feel as great before their eye contact had been interrupted. But he was scared to see that hateful stare again. It took a lot more energy than he had and willpower than he expected to turn his head to face the boy he had once thought might be his soulmate. The same one he’d proven could not be, which was now being unproven.

       The currents that raced through the stormcloud eyes Shion looked into were intimidating but not full of hate anymore. Maybe the other boy was too tired.

       Shion didn’t know how long they waited for something to change, but the wait felt too long.

       Two large ghastly flowers unfurled into the air from deep in the throats of the actor and the scientist. The flowers were still white. That didn’t last very long though. Shion was still watching the silver-eyed actor, but saw the blurred petals at the bottom of his vision change from snowy white to that very red of the blood that surrounded them. This was the color he wanted his flowers to turn, right? The fog of his mind made him forget why he had wanted this particular color. It was no longer appealing after being exposed to so much of it throughout his life.

       Relieved gasps were the first thing Shion heard. Then the actor clawed his own red flower from his mouth and threw it violently to the floor above them with a wet _schlunk_. He was panting heavily then made a blase huff and spat blood onto the soft makeshift bed right between he and Shion.

       The entire area was already soaked so it didn’t really matter, but Shion wondered if he’d meant anything by that. He had a suspicion this boy would be difficult based on his past experiences with him.

       After a few more exhausted inhales and exhales, the silver-eyed boy attempted to push himself back upright.

       The other staff pushed him back down and told him, “No, you need rest. Just stay with him until the play’s done. We’ll all be right here.”

       Someone was gently pulling Shion’s own flower out. He hadn’t made any move to try and rip it out himself. He was too exhausted to. Once it was gone, he tried to thank whoever had helped him but the words wouldn’t form. He could barely even keep his eyes open by then.

       “T-talk to each other or something,” someone suggested, not knowing he’d already realized it wasn’t an option.

       “Yeah, you better make this count,” an older woman huffed crossly. “This fiasco might take a toll on the theatre’s reputation.”

       “Calm down madame Fei, the show’s still going and we’ve calmed everyone down. If anything this shows we can handle anything.”

       The manager huffed and hobbled away. Shion was glad she was gone. He wanted everyone else gone too, but wasn’t so sure that his soulmate would stick around if they weren’t here to keep him here. He kept trying to get up and had to be pushed down again.

       Shion tried to think about what he could do. First impressions, even if this wasn’t really one of them, were important right? But he was too exhausted to do anything, not even move his hand.

       The actor boy eventually gave up, succumbing to his own exhaustion. He wasn’t even able to properly swat away the hands that squeezed his shoulder reassuringly. He returned his gaze to Shion, but by then Shion could barely see the flash of silver.

       Shion’s eyelids were too heavy. He should have known he wouldn’t get a chance to introduce himself to this particular boy even if he was his soulmate. Right before he fell asleep, he wondered if that was the cause for their confusion. Never once had Shion given the boy his name, and never once had Shion learned his.

 

❀❀❀

 

       Despite being one of the most painful experiences a person could have, no one ever died. There were no complications. So what was this then?

       Nezumi watched the bakery boy he’d not stopped thinking of ever since he’d broken into his mother’s kitchen and ever since he’d climbed the fence into his garden, and witnessed a complication. He had known from the moment blood began to leak from their mouths that something was wrong. There were reasons this boy couldn’t be his or anyone's soulmate, and yet Nezumi coughed up a flower while staring into his eyes. But they’d made eye contact before. What changed?

       Obviously nothing good.

       Nezumi inched his hand into the boy’s. It was almost against his will, or at least a part of it. He wanted to get away from him because to stay near a ghost was to invite his past back into his life. But he just wanted to feel if his skin was as warm as it was when they were children. It was warmer; almost burning hot, but Nezumi didn’t pull his hand away this time.

       The bakery boy, who had not stopped staring at him once since being laid beside him by his cast members and the crew, did not seem to notice that Nezumi was touching him. His eyes were closing slowly. He didn’t seem to be fighting whatever was taking him, but Nezumi was scared that he should have been. As those eyes closed, they were changing. The brown they once were was becoming brighter, stranger, the same color as the bloody flower petals that lay scattered about near his mouth. A pink streak, thicker than that he’d carved into himself on the first night that Nezumi met him, was forming on his pale sweat-dampened skin.

       These, Nezumi was sure, were definite signs of a complication.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :0 !!!!
> 
> (edit 11/30/18: this isn't abandoned, i'm just a little unmotivated right now, but will try to pick it up again before december's over~)


	4. Names

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u for your patience and forgive my slow bitch sins. (Especially those of u who started reading in like.... september. Holy Shit.)
> 
> if u spot any errors i'd love to know! my beta reader and I did our best but we wanna move onto the next chap while the motivation is flowing~  
> (p.s. her name is Oliv!)

      Surely this was some strange backwards dimension, otherwise Nezumi would have never been eager for an ambulance to arrive.

      The bakery boy’s chest rose and fell. Watching this constant rhythm was relaxing to Nezumi, who sat criss-cross to the side of him on the bloodied makeshift bed. There was nothing else he could do. Since halfway through his song on the stage, Nezumi had not spoken a word. Roots were still buried in the flesh around his esophagus, making his throat sore. Upon realizing he couldn’t or wouldn’t answer, the only person who still tried to talk to him was the mother of the bakery boy.

      Her name really was Karan like her bakery suggested. She’d introduced herself as soon she was sure her son had not died and was “only” sleeping. To Nezumi, that “only” was debatable, but it was enough to calm Karan. Now she sat on the bloody pile of blankets and pillows on the other side of her son, watching him with the same teary eyes he’d once seen on the boy when they were kids.

      Cast and crew members came and checked up on them often, offering them water and snacks. One time Karan nodded in Nezumi’s direction, knowing she wouldn’t get an answer from him, and asked, “What’s his name?”

      The crewmate, Rita, gave Nezumi a permission-seeking glance. Despite receiving only indifference, she answered, “His name is Nezumi.”

      “Nezumi,” Karan repeated while she turned her head to look at him.

      Nezumi wasn’t sure what to make of Karan. She still seemed dazed even half an hour after her son had passed out from the exertion of meeting his sou-- Nezumi. She kept wondering aloud to everyone who checked in on her, “Should I call an ambulance? Maybe we should have a specialist look at him?” but every time she was reminded that to pass out was normal and no one ever died. Nezumi thought that was shit advice. Even if the only person who’d seen her son’s eyes turn red had been Nezumi, the brown-haired boy clearly had a scar that hadn’t been there before. Passing out and bleeding from the mouth for hours upon meeting one’s soulmate wasn’t unusual, but this? An instant scar and a change of eye color? Nezumi wouldn’t have been surprised if other things were happening to the boy too; things they couldn’t see. He’d have called the ambulance himself if only he had his phone. Or voice. The others weren’t letting him get up in case he left, not that he wanted to anymore. He wasn’t really sure he ever wanted to, but he had felt like he needed to. And not just because he needed to get his phone.

      Before long Karan had pulled out her own phone and once she unlocked it Nezumi snatched it out of her hands. She didn’t protest but she did look at him with shock.

      He tapped in a typo-ridden sentence in her notepad app explaining why she needed to call an ambulance then handed the phone back to Karan.

      She listened.

      Now they waited. Nezumi had learned from last time that the emergency response in N’Soix city was apparently fast, but time felt like it wasn’t moving at all.

      Boos were mixed in with the cheers Nezumi heard as the play came to its final curtain call.

      According to the murmurs of the crew that bustled around him, the rest of the play was distracted disaster. Actors flubbed lines, the lighting crew missed their cues, and obvious details in the set weren’t adjusted between scenes. Everyone was too worried about Nezumi and his suddenly-scarred soulmate. But the impressions of the audience were already tainted so it hardly mattered. Maybe it had been unsalvageable from the moment Nezumi and the bakery boy locked eyes, as the manager suggested.

      Nezumi didn’t care about these things. They were simply something he could distract himself from the possibility that the bakery boy might be in terrible danger, and from the fact that this deeply bothered him.

      Karan and Nezumi sat in silence while the cast filtered in through the black curtains, looking frustrated. Most came to check on Nezumi before they went off to their changing rooms to get out of their costumes.

      When the actor and the mother of the boy destiny apparently wanted him with were alone together again, she cleared her throat. “Do… do you want to know his name, Nezumi?”

      He raised his eyes from her son.

      Karan’s eyes were searching his face. Was she looking for a reaction? Or maybe a slight hint of interest? Or maybe she thought Nezumi hated her and her son.

      Nezumi sighed and and typed into her phone’s notepad app, “From him.”

      She nodded and even cracked the first smile he’d seen her make that day. “I imagine he’d want to hear your name from you too.”

      Both pairs of eyes returned to the boy that laid between them, sleeping peacefully on his back like the princess in the play Nezumi had acted out several times already.

      Shouts about an ambulance sounded in the air the next moment.

      The scene Nezumi watched was all too familiar; people held the backstage fire door open so the paramedics could carry a stretcher inside. The manager yiped and groaned about the impression people would surely have now that two ambulances had shown up at her theatre. They shined a flashlight into the bakery boy’s eyes while the cast and crew offered explanations for what had happened. Nezumi could still barely move and didn’t help at all. He just stared at the boy who was carried into the back of the ambulance.

      Karan climbed into the back of the vehicle along with her son and then pointed back at Nezumi and said something to the paramedics. While they talked, the paramedics looked at Nezumi a few times before one ran over to him and said, “You should come with us.”

      He shook his head. He’d already been in ambulances one too many times in his life.

      “It’s soulmate bond related, so it might be affecting you too. It’s better to be safe than--”

      “I’m not going,” he crowed darkly and felt a warm little trickle of blood spill out from the corner of his mouth.

      That seemed to be enough to convince the paramedic to take a step back. Reluctantly, he began to head back to the car, shaking his head at the other paramedic and at Karan who immediately looked broken. She stared pleadingly at Nezumi until both doors of the ambulance were closed, blocking their eye contact.

      Nezumi wasn’t sure he’d be able to cleanse her heartbroken face from his mind anytime soon.

 

❀❀❀

 

      “You’re sure you want to hear it from me, honey?”

      Shion took a sip of water from his glass, watching his mother's sad and doubting face. He wanted to hear it from her as much as she wanted to be the one to tell him. The person he wanted to hear it from was the silver-eyed stranger, but at this point it was more about what Shion needed. “It would be difficult to ask around about him without a name,” he explained and set the glass back down.

      The two were having dinner at the tiny dining table in his mothers upstairs kitchen. This was a normal thing for the two of them, but this time didn't feel normal. It was tense. Karan had been walking on eggshells around Shion from the moment he woke up.

      A week and several days had passed since he coughed up a flower. The whole time Shion felt fine.

      He was fine to return to the lab and hike through the fern-heavy underbrush of N’Soix’s dense forests with his nervous coworkers. He knew they stared at him whenever they thought he wasn’t looking. He was fine with that too. He was fine to bake in his mother’s kitchen and mix flour and play her favorite springtime playlist. He assured every customer who saw him and gasped that he was fine. Because, physically, it was true.

      His mental state was not quite so easily described as “fine”. Maybe “lost” would be a better word.

      Lost could also describe his doctors’ feelings when he was delivered to the hospital unconscious with drastic palette changes, changes that were still happening over a week later. His hair was currently a muted beige, fading all over and streaked pure white in several areas. His new scar, which felt as smooth and soft as the rest of his skin, wound from his cheek to his foot. His eyes, now a deep bright red, reacted no differently to light than before either.

      The waits in bond flower specialist lobbies were quick because of the oddity of his case, but all that wasted time was beginning to amass. Shion felt like no progress was being made. There was no name for the way Shion had reacted to meeting his soulmate. Every specialist that joined his case seemed baffled and as far as they could tell the changes were not hurting him, so Shion simply declined to continue his checkups about it. All that time would be better spent _finding_ the man he’d reacted so strangely to.

      His mother knew the man’s name. She offered to tell it to him the moment Shion woke up in a hospital bed, but he hesitated and decided to wait. The silver-eyed boy’s name felt like something precious, something that Shion had to hear from his own lips. He wondered over and over if their lack of a name exchange was the reason they hadn’t realized they were soulmates earlier. Maybe now it was the reason his eyes were as red as the bond flower he’d choked up.

      “Alright Shion.” Karan folded her hands on the table beside her empty plate. She took a breath. “His name is Nezumi.”

      “...Nezumi.”

      He only vaguely registered Karan’s nod from across the table, which felt like it was expanding, putting more and more distance between her and Shion every moment.

      “Nezumi,” Shion repeated more quietly, looking down at his hand around the glass of water. His knuckles were the reddest they had ever been. A soulmate injury marred them and now the flowers that broke through the skin were the same vivid red as the rest of the wound. It was only a few hours old, which meant the other boy was still getting in fights. It was like nothing had changed since they were kids, even though everything it. Shion stared at the injury until he couldn’t see it, which didn’t take long. No matter where his ruby eyes rested Shion kept seeing the furious widening gaze of his soulmate’s silver ones. He had never human seen eyes as beautiful and ferocious as his soulmates- _-Nezumi’s_ , when Nezumi realized what Shion and he were supposed to be to each other. It seemed he hated the idea.

      Safu’s voice from when they were children whispered, _“Do you think your soulmate will love you? Do you think that careless soulmates who get hurt as often as yours can love anyone?”_ Their bond flowers seemed to think so. But was that enough?

      “Nezumi,” he whispered to himself as he shoved his knuckles in his pockets and left his mother’s bakery. He repeated it several more times while walking down the street toward the theatre, assessing his own feelings about it. Nezumi was a strange name. Shion wasn't certain he understood it right. _Rat_ wasn't what he expected someone as otherworldly as the silver-eyed actor to be called. But at the same time any other name that came to him seemed to fall flat.

      Shion didn't stop quietly repeating the name to himself whenever he thought no one could hear him. And sometimes even the presence of others didn’t stop him. If they gave him strange looks or not, he didn’t see. The world around him felt distant, but the name “Nezumi” felt almost too close. Every time he said it, he felt more and more convinced he needed the practice. He kept saying it while building up the courage to go inside the theatre again. Then Shion realized he was mouthing it silently while staring right at the nervous staff member in the ticketbooth. As if he wasn't eerie enough with red eyes.

      The staff member swallowed and Shion approached the booth. Shion opened his mouth to speak, but the person in the booth was quicker. “He’s not here.”

      Shion repeated that under his breath too.

      “Unless you’re not here for him,” the ticket seller added with the quirk of an eyebrow. “You don't want a ticket do you?” Shion looked over the ticket seller's shoulder and noted that the posters behind the ticket seller were for _Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,_ and scheduled for about two weeks off.

      “No. Have you heard from him? From N-Nezumi?”

      “Nothing. The manager’s pis--" The ticket seller cut themself off with a single nervous laugh on which their voice cracked, then rephrased with, “ The manager’s _looking for him_.”

      “Is there any way I can get in contact with him?”

      “Uh. I don’t know if I can tell you that kind of thing? What if you’re a creep…”

      Shion understood policies about how people can’t just give out their coworkers information, but he didn’t understand how he wasn’t exempt. It took him no time to decide to keep pressing. “I’m his soulmate. We never exchanged numbers, or… anything. I don’t know how to find him again except through this theatre.”

      “We don’t _know_ his contact information.”

      Shion frowned a little deeper. It wasn’t intentional, but while he thought about what to ask next, he brushed hair from his eyes with his more damaged hand.

      The ticket seller’s eyes trailed the bright red wound and its fresh flowers. They swallowed and continued, “Honest! It's not on any record we have! If madame manager Fei knew, she'd have wrangled him back to work by now.”

      “Is there anyone in the cast or crew who's close with him?”

      “I dunno. I doubt it. Nezumi’s kind of… cagey.”

      So cagey nobody would know anything about him? Shion couldn’t believe that. He kept staring at and through the ticket seller. What did this mean? What was Shion supposed to do?

      As if through a wall, Shion barely heard the ticket seller say, “If you, err, find him come and... tell us?”

      Shion didn't remember if he gave the ticket seller some empty promise of pointing this angry-eyed stranger back to his acting job or not. He was too busy focusing on the lost feeling he drowned in on his walk back past his mother's bakery to the subway station, rubbing the wounds on his knuckles. The theatre was his only lead. He had no idea what to do from here about finding Nezumi.

 

❀❀❀

 

      Nezumi never lost track of the bakery boy. It helped that he only had to keep his eye out for maybe the only person in the city still wearing sweaters.

      N’Soix was located in a particularly rainy place. It was the peak of spring, and cold dreary days weren’t usually uncommon especially during this season, but it hadn’t rained in over a week. The sun had been blazing all day and yet when Nezumi saw the boy from his dark spot on the park bench across from Karan’s bakery, he was in as thick a sweater as ever. This one was a pale purple that went nicely with his pink apron. As pale as his hair had become. It got lighter and lighter every time Nezumi saw him.

      Nezumi had returned to spying on the bakery from a distance every two or three days. His visits were sometimes during the day, sometimes at night, and always a contest of will. A bigger and bigger part of him was giving in to the idea of letting this charming if not occasionally uncanny stranger into his life, and that didn’t sit right with the rest of him. Romance, Soulmates, and destiny in general didn’t sit right with Nezumi.

      Because Nezumi was coming during the day half the times he dropped by, he realized that the boy didn’t work full time. While he was always there for closing time, whether or not he came for the after-lunch rush seemed to depend on some other job. One that involved a lab coat. Was he some kind of scientist? Maybe he could figure out what had gone wrong with his soulmate bond all for himself.

      It was late in the afternoon and sunset would be approaching soon. The bakery was busy. All three booths were full and the door to the bakery was open more often than it was closed due to all the people coming and going.

      The boy with the greying hair was manning the cash register this evening. Since he was on the shorter side the heads of his customers often blocked him from Nezumi’s view. Sometimes tall cars and buses did too since there was a road between the park bench Nezumi sat at and the bakery. One time the boy’s smiling face was blocked by a a dark grey windowless van, just like the one that had chased Nezumi through the city.

      For all of a half second Nezumi didn’t mind this. A van like that was what had lead Nezumi to his rediscovery of the living ghost that had helped him as a child. In that half a second, Nezumi felt gratitude.

      Disgusting.

      This soulmate bond was fucking with Nezumi’s head in all the worst ways. Why did the flickering orange street lamp outside of his apartment window suddenly reminded him of unpredictable lightning strikes, like those he’d first met the boy beneath? Why did he have to picture every pair of doe-like brown eyes he passed on the streets filling with red? Why did he keep coming back to watch him?

      And now the theatre he worked at was a cursed place. That stage had tasted his blood. The audience had seen him fall to his knees and have be carried away. He didn’t want the stage to be a place he’d associate with a stranger, he wanted it to be a place he associated with his hobbies and passions, with the only positive aspect of made him Nezumi. It was part of his individuality.

      He did not return to the theatre, but the bakery boy did. The last time Nezumi had spied on him at the bakery after closing time, he’d spotted the boy sitting in one of the booths flipping through something. Wanting to see what it was, Nezumi had dared to get close, to cross the street and take a quick peek through the giant window. It had been a new playbook from the theatre, one that must have been issued after Nezumi left. Nezumi’s name and face were probably in that book.

      The slate-haired boy was drawn back to his present-day spying as another gray van passed between him and the bakery boy. Or maybe it was the same one, just going a different direction.

      Nezumi stretched his arms up in the air and his legs out in front of him, digging his heels into the grass. He’d been here for over an hour now, and the bench was starting to feel cold and too-hard underneath him.

      Lights were beginning to turn on in the tall buildings surrounding the park. The sun had almost finished setting and the sky was violet grey. Across the street, the bakery was still busy and the door was still open. But this time it was the bakery boy standing in the doorway, staring across the street right at Nezumi.

      Nezumi couldn’t stand fast enough.

      All at once, the street lamps lit up. Their golden light was blocked from Nezumi by the leaves of oaks and other park trees, which cast a shadow over him and much of the grass around him. The streetlamps illuminated his soulmate's bright red eyes, nearly causing them to glow. They didn’t blink. They didn’t move from Nezumi’s face even when Nezumi took one and then two steps backwards into the park, unable to break his own stare.

      Not even the sudden crackling boom and burst of orange light from down the street drew the young men's eyes from each other. But the screams that followed did.

      The noises and light had come from the theatre. It was opening night of _Sweeney Todd._ Spring’s sunset was around when The Night's Dream should have been welcoming its patrons to their red satin seats. Instead shrieking people in suits and dresses were spilling out the gaudy double-double doors on both sides of the ticketbooth. Smoke also came from those doors. It rose past the light-up marquee above the entrance, which flickering faster and faster until it was sparking and alight with its own flames.

      Cars were slowing and pulling over to the side of the road. Theatre patrons and passerbys alike had pulled out their phones to record what they were seeing or to call for help. A few well-meaning but self-preservation lacking morons entered the smoking theatre upon hearing the cries for help coming from inside. One of those morons had stark white hair and a pale lilac apron and sweater.

      Nezumi looked between the finally-empty doorway to the bakery and the smoking theatre.

      He hadn't. He _hadn't!_

      But there was no smiling red eyed boy in the crowd emerging from the bakery. As often as Nezumi’s eyes played tricks on him, fire and this particular boy were rarely elements they attempted to mix.

      It was on wobbly legs Nezumi moved towards the theatre. Should he have been running? His soulmate was in there. Should he have been wanting to rush in and save him? Shouldn't other people have needed to hold him back from the flames, rather than his own weak nerves?

      But of course, when he reached the edge of the sidewalk right the before the flaming marquee he had to stop altogether. He couldn't bring himself to go near a burning building.

      Ghosts from his childhood stared at him through the flames leaping out the doorway. They had melted bubbling skin. Skin like his soulmate was bound to have now. Nezumi would feel the flowers any moment. Of all the ghosts he saw, his sister was the clearest. She was reaching for him. Her hands were slicked with Nezumi's blood, as well as a few flower petals. He remembered how she's slipped from his grip and only managed to snag a few fresh bloodied bulbs from the brand new gash on his palm. A gash that had formed right when Nezumi needed his grip the most.

      Her image was replaced by that of the bakery boy.

      He rushed out of the theatres smoke and into fresh air with a silent baby in his arms. In his blind haste, he almost crashed right into Nezumi, but Nezumi sidestepped deftly and caught the boy's elbows to stop him before he could run into the street. Then Nezumi spun him by his elbows until they were facing each other, thoughtlessly on Nezumi's part. What did he want to see the bakery boy for? To check for burns? Or to check and see if his eyes brought him as much comfort when red.

      The boy's eyes were watery, staring down at the baby. He didn't even seem to notice Nezumi.

      Nezumi eased himself backwards, until bumping shoulders with a few of the frantic people who wanted to check on the baby.

      The bakery boy still hadn’t noticed.

      Nezumi allowed the crowd to separate them. People swarmed around the bakery boy, tapping his soft cheek and it’s pink discolored band, drawing his eyes up to their concerned faces. Was Nezumi concerned?

      He blinked those red eyes rapidly as he was drawn from his trance by other good samaritans. His paling eyelashes just as interesting to Nezumi as the color they framed.

      It was strangely difficult, as everything else involving this boy had been since Nezumi rediscovered him, but he willed himself to keep slinking back through the crowd. His fist was clenching and unclenching every few steps he took. When he glanced back next, he couldn’t even tell what color the bakery boy’s eyes were. Nezumi really could just leave, right now, again. He was going to leave. He was _leaving_.

      Two elderly grandparents had pushed their way through the crowd and while one scooped the baby from the bakery boy’s arms, the other gave him a quick kiss on the forehead. And that’s when Nezumi stopped.

      Without the baby in his arms, the bakery boy seemed to destabilize. He had to take a few steps backwards to regain his balance, and like Nezumi he ended up bumping into another person. Unlike Neumi, he didn’t seem to notice. His eyes darted around the crowd. At one point his eyes caught the firelight and Nezumi could see, even from this distance, how vibrant they were.

      Why was Nezumi still here? Why was he still watching?

      The red-eyed boy opened his mouth and called something out, but Nezumi couldn’t hear it over the panicked din or the crackling flames. He called it again, but no heads turned. Was he looking for Nezumi? Probably. When the bakery boy didn’t find Nezumi, his soft face contorted into something more volatile, creasing between his eyes and up his nose. Nezumi couldn’t tell if the boy was in pain, or furious, until he started crying.

       Nezumi shouldn’t have still been watching. Nezumi shouldn’t have released his clenched fist for good and made his way back through the crowd. There was a few seconds where Nezumi completely lost the bakery boy, and even scanning the crowd for a shock of nearly white hair and a purple sweater didn’t help. That almost lead to Nezumi tripping over the boy.

       He had crouched down even with all the feet and knees colliding around him, risking being trampled just to hide his damp face. He seemed to be crying into his knees.

       Nezumi crouched down too. He didn’t really know what to say and he didn’t want to touch the other boy, but he couldn’t just wait for someone to barrel into the both of them. Growing up how Nezumi had, he was very calm and level headed, but it still surprised him how easily he found it to rest a hand on the other boy’s shoulder. He half expected to feel the dried petals of a dead soulmate’s injury underneath the sweater, but evidently his soulmate was alive. Or at least, his current one.

       The bakery boy looked up suddenly and the rage and disappointment vanished like the ghosts Nezumi sometimes saw. His eyes flicked to Nezumi’s hand on his shoulder for a quick moment. When he returned them to Nezumi’s face, he smiled. It was a forgiving smile. Also a harmless looking one, even though smiling after all this only reinforced what Nezumi already knew about this bakery boy: he was completely crazy.        

 

❀❀❀

 

       Their shoulders were very close. Nezumi wasn’t sure if he minded that or not. So far nothing bad had happened when he and the other boy touched, no matter how much Nezumi expected bad things. From his peripherals he could see the way the other boy glanced at the gap between them. The glances weren’t frequent, but they lingered.

       They sat on the same park bench Nezumi usually occupied to spy on his companion. Across the street from them was the now-empty bakery. Karan had gone into the kitchen to clean up for the day after her son filled her in on what had happened and where to find him if needed. The two young men had no view of the theatre because of the oak tree in their way, but they could see the increasingly faint orange light of the dying fire. From the rumors Nezumi heard, the fire seemed to have been started intentionally. Firefighters arrived and started putting it out right when the first rain of the week started falling. It was a moderate rain so Neumi appreciated the oversized clear umbrella the bakery boy had retrieved from his mom before rejoining him out here.

       The pitter-patter against the oak leaves and umbrella was comforting. It filled the silence between Nezumi and his… _soulmate…_ rather well. He felt no need to speak up just yet. He was content to watch the city’s reflective streets and their puddles which quickly stilled whenever a passing car didn’t drive through them. Cities when it rained were the one thing more magical to Nezumi than the forest he grew up in.

       The bakery boy seemed to notice when Nezumi tilted his head back to watch water run off the umbrella. He spun the umbrella in place and sent waterdrops flying outward.

       It was hard to remain neutral when he saw how each droplet caught glints of color from the buildings that surrounded them. But when he looked down at his smaller companion, it was a neutral expression he wore.

       The bakery boy smiled again. He’d been smiling a lot throughout their silent sitting. Not in an overwhelming way, mostly just a tired one. It gave Nezumi a little bit of hope that he could be reasoned with. He kept spinning the umbrella and Nezumi’s eyes were drawn to the scabs on his knuckles. They made no sense. For as reckless as this little bakery boy was, he didn’t seem like the sort of person who would get in a fistfight, much less the sort who’d come out of that fight with no other injuries. Nezumi almost broke the ice with a question about how he managed that, but then it hit him that Nezumi himself had been the cause.

       He looked down at his own knuckles, identical to this soft and pretty stranger’s. The source: some guy needed a little roughing up, or he might have continued to harass one of the few people Nezumi liked.

       The drum of rain almost obscured the first words either of them exchanged. It was from the bakery boy. A simple, “Don’t worry.”

       Nezumi looked at him again and saw that he was looking up at the rain he was spinning off the tips of the umbrella ribs. He looked completely at ease.

       “If you _are_ worrying, that is.”

       “About?”

       “Injuries,” the bakery boy said and stopped spinning the umbrella to look down at Nezumi’s knuckles, before spinning it the other direction.

       Nezumi was less sure than ever how to feel about soulmate bond injuries. Certainly not worried. He didn’t receive them very often. This bakery boy was either very lucky or very careful.

       Both men remained quiet, eyes trained on the blur of the spinning umbrella while they each seemed to ponder things.

       “You inhaled smoke. How do those lungs feel, your majesty?” Nezumi started and watched him from the corner of his eye to see how he reacted.

        _“Your majesty,”_ the boy with red eyes scoffed and shook his head before giving Nezumi a bright-eyed look. “I feel fine. Is that how you’ve been referring to me this whole time?”

       “Not once. I’ve never talked about you.” It was true.

       The bakery boy kept watching Nezumi, unoffended, and didn’t react expect to start spinning the umbrella in the original direction again.

       Nezumi offered his first, slow and cautious smile and the other boy's eyes seemed immediately drawn to it. “How do you refer to me?”

       “By your name.”

       “Where’d you hear it from?”

       “Several people. Why?” He glanced at Nezumi’s knuckles. “Will you hunt them down?”

       “Maybe. Except for your mom, if she was one of them.”

       The bakery boy seemed to think for a minute, scanning Nezumi’s face for a sign one way or another if he could trust him on that. Normally Nezumi wouldn't have wanted his or anyone else's trust, but he wasn't the sort to go after someone's mother, especially not a kind one like Karan. Maybe the baker could sense that, so he finally said, “She was the first to tell me. I couldn't go asking around about you without your name.”

       “And how did that go?”

       A shrug. Then he threw Nezumi a bright smile. “Looks like I just needed to be patient.”

       Nezumi hummed and recoiled a little bit, frowning at the rain. Maybe that was true. Even without a fire down the street, he knew he’d been pushing his luck with the frequent visits. “Good for you,” Nezumi watched him closely as he continued, "Because apparently you’re not the best investigator or you’d have more things to show for yourself than just theatre pamphlets.”

       The umbrella stopped spinning. The baker narrowed his eyes. “You were watching the bakery today.” And other days. Nezumi had seen him reading that pamphlet days ago, but not once since. Those cogs seemed to be turning quickly in his companions red eyes as he glanced back at the bakery and chewed a little on the inside of his lip. “You coulda just talked to me.”

       No, he couldn't have. But not for any reasons he could easily explain. Not that Nezumi was ever the type to explain anything at all. He mimicked the shrug the bakery boy had given him earlier.

       “I thought I was being overbearing just by being curious and meanwhile you were spying on me,” the bakery boy mumbled, mostly for himself. “I was beginning to think you hated me.”

       That wasn’t exactly true. It was the soulmate bond Nezumi despised so passionately, not the poor soul it decided to lump him with. This bakery boy had done so much more right by Nezumi than wrong. Nezumi’s silver eyes fell to the pink band that wound around the baker’s rounded cheek, neck and dipped beneath the collar of his sweater. These were seemingly in the exact places this ex-ghost had once cut himself to see if Nezumi would bleed too. But of all the awful things people had tried to do to Nezumi, that was rather tame and came from the mind of a grieving child. Consciously, Nezumi forgave him. Subconsciously, there was something about that betrayal that changed Nezumi forever. It had made it so Nezumi could never fully trust this doe-eyed daydream boy with his soft pink lips or anyone else ever again. Nezumi couldn’t hate him for that either though. Not trusting a soul kept Nezumi safe. And he liked plenty of people he didn’t trust. Or, well, he liked maybe two people. If this bakery boy merely existing didn’t come with the responsibility and risks of being a soulmate, then Nezumi would have probably liked him too. But he couldn’t allow himself to. Still, it wasn’t hate.

       “Nezumi?”

       Nezumi turned his head slowly to look at the still-nameless boy who’d called him from his mulling.

       He was leaning forward and into Nezumi’s space a bit to watch him more closely. His head was tilted and his messy hair fell to the side. Some of it caught on his eyelashes. His brows, quite a lot thicker than Nezumi’s own, were furrowed upward with worry. Orange and blue rim lighting illuminated the sides of his face, making him seem almost angelic, but at the same time Nezumi couldn’t stop seeing him as a highly flawed little creature. “You hate me.”

        _“No,”_ Nezumi said markedly. Even for all his flaws, the bakery boy seemed unhateable. In fact, his flaws were what interested Nezumi the most. “I don't hate you.”

       The bakery boy didn’t smile or remove himself from Nezumi’s little bubble of space. He blinked once. “Okay.”

       “You just said my name.”

       “My mom told me, remember?” He sat back against the bench and began to spin the umbrella again. Soon after, one of his legs swung lazily forward and skated for a moment across the top of a puddle that had formed beneath the bench. “Nez–” He did it again quite a lot faster and sent up a spray of rainwater onto the grassy hill before them. “–umi!”

       “What do you think of it?”

       The baker looked up at him for a moment and pursed his lips to one side for a moment with a, “Hm… Nezumi.” He started to swing his legs a little, skating them across the top of the puddle again. The umbrella was being spun faster than ever. It was like he was suddenly more comfortable and allowing himself to be a little more playful. “Well, it suits you _okay._ You don’t look like a rat, but you act like one.”

       Nezumi smiled again and snickered. “I’m very familiar with how rats act. That’s more of a compliment than you think.”

       “I suppose. They’ve been excellent test subjects. They _are_ very intelligent,” the baker mused. “I’m Shion.”

       “Shion, huh?” Nezumi repeated, eyes falling to the pale purple sweater, the same color as asters. Cool and pale colors suited Shion. They complimented all the pinks and reds accenting his pale face. His name suited him too. Maybe not quite so well at the moment, however. His sweater had managed to absorb a decent amount of rain despite the umbrella. If they stayed out too much longer it could become dreadfully heavy. “You look like someone who could be named after a flower, but you don’t act like one.”

       The laugh Shion made was warm and waiflike, carried on a single breath. “I don’t think I’d want to act like a flower anyhow!”

       Nezumi clenched his jaw and stopped looking at him. He sort of wished he could stop hearing him for a second too. But that little laugh was flitting around inside his skull like a bird in a cage.

       The city’s smushed and sparkly reflection in the asphalt wasn’t good enough at captivating Nezumi’s attention anymore, not now that he’d heard such a thing. Even though he knew what was happening. The soulmate bond was sinking its roots into his head. But this boy, this _Shion--_ he was his past. He was supposed to be a mere memory of a transitional time in his life, one he needed to leave where it belonged. He couldn’t let a laugh he’d heard once be more charming to him than the environment he’d loved almost his whole life.

       “You’re gone again.”

       “Exactly. While this has been fun, it's time I go.” He stood up so quickly he didn’t have the time to brace himself for the chill of the raindrops once he left the umbrella’s cover.

       “What?! You’re going to disappear again?”

       “Not for long.”

       “Liar!”

       Nezumi immediately regretted the sharp look he cast Shion. He shouldn’t have looked at him at all.

       He seemed to be curling in on himself, outwardly expressing worry and… inside, angry. His eyebrows had a twitch and the way his mouth was set gave it away. He didn’t want to be abandoned yet again without an explanation. Would despising being bound to a stranger even cut it as an explanation?

       “You’re rather perceptive, your majesty,” Nezumi admitted with a click of his tongue. This smile he offered was forced. “But you can’t control me.”

       “Is that what you’re scared of?”

       Not particularly. Shion didn’t have what it took to control Nezumi. Nobody he’d ever met did.

       Shion exhaled loudly and folded his umbrella, allowing the rain to darken his sweater and apron completely. He stood up just as fast as Nezumi but with a little hop afterwards to balance himself. “Listen Nezumi. I’m going shopping tomorrow at around noon in the food district. I'm hittng the grocery store and fish market at some point. If you wanna drop by and join me, I could use the extra hands.”

       Nezumi blinked, taken aback by the strangely plain proposal. He supposed that itself meant it suited Shion. He never seemed to do as Nezumi predicted he would.

        _“Orrr_ you can just follow me around from the shadows, if that’s how you prefer to get to know people,” Shion suggested with a wide grin. “See if you can count how many pamphlets I pick up.”

       Nezumi shook his head but found himself unable to not smile at the little well-deserved jab, which got Shion to grin even wider.

       The shorter, paler haired boy gently placed the umbrella in Nezumi’s hands. He seemed to try and avoid brushing their fingers against each other’s, which Nezumi appreciated but didn’t understand, coming from Shion’s perspective.

       Then the bakery boy trotted down the hill towards the bakery, stopping to look both ways to cross the street, but never once looking back at Nezumi until he was gone. It was an ability Nezumi hadn’t had when he needed it the most.


	5. Stares of Near-Strangers

 

          Shion was pretending his shopping cart had a squeaky wheel. That way whenever he went down a new aisle of this grocery store it meant the heads of other shoppers turned towards him because of the noise, not because they were startled by his appearance.

          A little girl around the age most children were just learning to speak pointed and excitedly exclaimed, “Red!”

          Her parents seemed torn between praising or scolding her, so Shion smiled at them and then waved at the girl. The tension in their shoulders lessened and they smiled back.

          The tension in Shion’s own body didn’t subside one bit. Receiving so much attention from strangers wasn’t something he was used to. He was just an ecologist who mostly looked at soil samples under a microscope. Other times he was a baker who spent most of his time in the kitchen with only his mother as company. He didn’t know how to cope with the eyes that watched him when he wasn’t looking. Hairs-- hairs he still wasn’t used to being so very white; only a few streaks of grey and mousy muted-beige remained--stood on end whenever he picked up on the whispery guesses people exchanged about what could be wrong with _that strange boy._ Those guesses were as good as his own and as those of the doctors that still wanted to poke and prod him.

          He pushed his half-filled cart along the aisle and tried not to be bothered while inspecting cans of soup or beans or ravioli and bottles of salad dressing. About a quarter or less of the things Shion inspected ended up in his cart. That, and always wanting to try different brands and different grocery stores altogether meant Shion’s bi-monthly shopping trips took several hours. He’d already been here for one hour. All alone.

          Nezumi was nowhere to be seen.

          It hurt. Shion knew he shouldn’t be surprised by his current loneliness because Nezumi made no promise to show up. He strongly suspected Nezumi hadn’t even intended to speak with Shion at all and only did it out of pity. But Shion was a natural optimist and wasn’t going to give up on him just yet. After all, Nezumi said he didn’t hate him. To Shion that meant they had a chance at some kind of positive relationship! One where Nezumi visited Shion because he liked to, not because he felt bad for him.

          One of the cans of mushroom soup Shion inspected had a word-filled heart on the side which detailed how healthy it was. The heart was red.

          Shion quickly placed the can back on the shelf and twisted it until the heart was facing away from him.

          He’d always wanted to share red flowers with his soulmate. Despite not being very good at it, Shion was a romantic. He didn’t consume much romantic media or daydream about love, but seeing couples sharing their pastries in the bakery or walking with entwined fingers always made him smile. The thing Shion wondered about the most in regards to his soulmate, however, was if he would ever wake up with dry and dust-colored flowers all over his body once more. He wondered if his soulmate would die again.

          It had started raining outside. Shion saw it was he left the aisle, and other shoppers saw him. They stared at him while he stared at the rain. The grocery store had a slightly inconvenient layout wherein the aisles were all parallel to the glass storefront and the checkout area. Being so far from the front, Shion hadn’t noticed the rain until now, and what he saw was worrisome. The giant windows at the front were being beat against with frightening force from the hardest rain Shion had seen all year. That week without rain in the middle of spring was being violently repaid. He hoped it wouldn’t end up flooding.

          Imaginary squeaks announced his presence when he made his way down the next aisle. It was full of crisps and soda but no shoppers.

          Neither Shion nor any of his loved ones indulged in junk food very often. He still preferred to have a few cans of soda or crisps in his house in case he had surprise visits from coworkers or friends of his mother. As a physiologist and a rather fastidious one at that, Safu didn’t even try to hide her disdain for any unhealthy food except that of Karan’s bakery and bakeries that reminded her of Karan’s. Now that she was moving back to N’Soix to be near her grandma and have a place to show her soulmate, Ann, Shion would probably be hearing more of her junkfood criticism. He wondered if Nezumi liked junkfood.

          At the moment, Shion could barely read any of the ingredient lists he held up to his face because of how distracted he was by his thoughts. He wondered if Nezumi liked junkfood.

          Shion looked up and recognized a vaguely familiar figure.

          A tall dripping man clad almost entirely in black leather stood there. The black glass of his motorcycle helmet reflected everything in the aisle, including Shion taking three quick steps back from his cart and tilting his head.

          Shion wasn’t scared but he was having a difficult time processing. He hadn’t been scared the first time he’d seen this stranger either, just confused and strangely enthralled. Who broke into a bakery kitchen only to “hide”? Who left a note and a twenty dollar bill as an apology? Who showed up to a grocery store and kept their helmet on? Part of the note this stranger left behind said something like, _‘I won’t come back,”_ which wasn’t a lie because this wasn’t the bakery, but Shion still felt lied to.

          The stranger began to approach. His combat boots were damp and squeaked against the linoleum with every step he took closer to Shion. There was a knife in his boot.

          Without his mother to pull him away, Shion remained still. For almost the entirety of the should-be threatening approach, Shion watched like a bird on a safe perch might watch a cat. He only remembered that he _wasn’t_ safe when he saw the reflection of his own calm and curious red eyes in the helmet. Suddenly the shopping cart was hurtling towards the stranger and Shion was turning, not even sure if he’d been the one to kick that cart. Maybe the cart was simply following its own soulmate bond directly to the stranger’s belt buckle.

          The stranger dodged with ease and even caught the cart with one hand so it didn’t hurtle clear out of the aisle.

          Shion took off running. He dashed around the end of the aisle and ran a good few seconds before turning into one of the others. It was made up of hygiene products and not a soul else. He wasn’t scared. He wasn’t really sure what he felt, but being approached by a faceless knife-equipped burglar triggered something inside him that wasn’t willing to watch and see. Instead he kept picturing the bond flower ward. He didn’t want his reckless soulmate being sent there. They got hurt enough as is. Shion inhaled deeply through his nostrils and closed his eyes on the exhale. His reckless soulmate was named Nezumi, he reminded himself. What would Nezumi do in this situation?

          Shion heard some wet boot squelches getting closer, and fast. If Shion kept running the leather-clad stranger might chase him. He was so much taller than Shion; he could catch him even if his boots were slippery. So instead Shion snagged a decent-sized plastic hair claw from the nearby shelves of clips and boxes of dye. He didn’t have time to scan for anything more intimidating, but he didn’t know what to do with a hair claw either and stared at it uselessly.

          When the stranger appeared around the corner, Shion smashed the hair claw against the floor so some of the plastic pieces flew off, leaving the claw with jagged edges. He brandished his light little weapon and watched to see if the figure took his threat seriously or not.

          The stranger paused. And then he raised his gloved hands to his helmet and lifted it. Inky hair fell free around the face of--

          “Nezumi!” Shion bellowed sharply.

          “Shion,” Nezumi replied coolly. There was a mean twinkle in his eyes.

          “Why didn’t you say something?!”

          “Why didn’t you?”

          “I thought you were the guy who--! It doesn’t matter! It would have really helped if you said something, you know.”

          Nezumi shook his hair out and set the helmet on a shelf which had been nearly cleared of its wares so he could pull a scrunchie from his pocket. “Maybe.” The scrunchie ended up between his lips while he gathered his hair with both hands.

          Shion was slow to speak, caught up momentarily with staring at how Nezumi’s pale lips could still curl into a little one-sided smirk when had a scrunchie in his mouth. “Not… Not maybe, definitely! You should have realized I thought you were someone else.”

          Hair slipped in and out of Nezumi’s gloved fingers like it was dark grey liquid. How could he be so elegant after he’d just-about Jason Voorhees-ed after Shion in a freakin’ grocery store? It wasn’t fair. “I knew what I was doing.”

          “You wanted to scare me?” Shion deadpanned with a twitching eyebrow. His face was heating up and his heart had gained speed. It was weird to think he was more stressed now than when he thought he was under attack.

          “And _you_ wanted to cut a stranger with a plastic hair claw.”

          “I’ve never been in that position before so I didn’t know how to react.”

          Nezumi finished tying up his hair and paused to look Shion’s defensive expression over. “It’s good to know you _do_ have an ounce of self preservation, even if it wouldn’t have worked. That can grow.”

          “What does that mean?”

          “Who knows. Maybe I’ll...” he paused, his eyes seemed to darken. “...dress up as a fire next time.”

          “You’re joking.”

          “Good job sussing that out. You should be a detective.”

          It was hard to explain because Shion didn’t feel very mad, but he wanted to act out. Maybe it was leftover from thinking Nezumi hated him all week, and for being so sure Nezumi would show up before finally accepting that he hadn’t. Except now he had. He was just so confused. And so, if just to express that confusion, Shion tossed the broken hair claw at the floor and watched it bounce once until it settled at his own feet. Then he picked it back up. He’d already broken it, so he should probably pay for it. With a deflating huff Shion stepped past Nezumi and returned to the shopping cart.

          The hair claw was half-heartedly tossed in with everything else and Shion plucked another batch of soda from the aisle. This time he placed it directly in the cart with absolutely no inspecting. Whatever it was, he wasn’t the one intending to drink it. He pushed the cart a few steps and then glanced over his shoulder.

          Nezumi wasn’t there.

          “Nezumi?”

          All he heard was the shuffle of other shoppers in other aisles, some of which actually did have squeaky wheels.

          Raising his voice a little he called, “Nezumi?” again, and waited.

          Nezumi still didn’t appear. Had he left?

          Once again, Shion was darting out of the aisle without his cart. He saw Nezumi’s now-dry and silent boot disappear around the opposite corner of the hair product aisle. When Shion turned that corner, he couldn’t help but whine an especially exasperated, _“Nezumi!”_

          The taller boy with his helmet under his arm looked over his shoulder at him and narrowed his eyes.

          Shion seized up in the all-too calm gaze of the boy he wanted to get to know.

           _“What,”_ Nezumi barked.

          “Aren’t you here to shop with me?”

          A long pause. Then Nezumi approached again and leaned down just a little until their faces were level.

          Shion retreated just a few millimeters and subconsciously held his breath. It was quite obvious with his puffed out cheeks.

          It was the soft snort Nezumi uttered which alerted Shion to his own strange face. He didn't dare change it though, not with Nezumi in it.

         He could see the slopes of Nezumi’s dark eyebrows decline just slightly as he studied Shion’s face. Shion was studying his too. It was so beautiful, especially up close. He could see little strings in his irises, apparently made up of all sorts of silver shades, some as dark as his hair and some as light as Shion’s. His pupils were always so small and intimidating, but they seemed to slowly get bigger and bigger as he scanned Shion’s face.

          Shion swallowed. Irises getting bigger meant something, he believed. But his head just wasn’t working at the moment.

          Those mind-numbing silver eyes blinked, which did nothing to release the spell they had over Shion. “Are you sure, your majesty?”

          “Well yes, I invited you and here you are.”

          “Figured that invitation got revoked after your ridiculously tiny tantrum.” He smiled and stood back up to his full height, finally allowed Shion to exhale, though now that smile was having its own effects on him. “Whatever. I’m still here.”

          “Then c’mon.” He hesitated for a moment and then grabbed Nezumi’s gloved hands, which immediately seemed to tense up. Shion regretted it a little, but didn’t know how to let go. Besides, that would be so awkward. “You can put food you like in the cart too.”

          “Nah.” Nezumi was staring down at Shion’s hands.

          Shion turned and guided him back to his cart, then dropped the taller boy’s hands to point at all the junkfood. “Everything you see is allowed in the cart! Other aisles too!”

          Nezumi put his helmet in the cart and didn’t say anything to Shion’s offer, so Shion didn’t push it.

          They walked quietly and Shion struggled to focus for a new reason whenever he read lists of ingredients. He glanced up at Nezumi fairly often.

          Every time, without fail, Nezumi was staring back at him cooly, objectively, like he was the sample and Nezumi was the scientist. He eventually commented, “You’re picky.”

          Shion smiled meekly. “A bit.”

           _“Very_ picky.”

          Shion paused while moving to place a bag of salad back in its spot in the chilly aisle, wondering if it might be better to put it in the cart and start proving him wrong. “Is being picky bad?”

          Nezumi made the faintest face, but Shion wasn’t familiar enough with it to gauge what it meant. “Nah.”

          “Alright. I’m picky but I also like to try new things,” Shion supplied, wondering if Nezumi cared to know that. “I haven’t had any of the brands in this cart before. Have you?”

          Nezumi’s eyes dropped to the cart and their labels of varying degrees of tackiness. “Dunno."

          “Okay. Well, what’s your favorite food?”

          “Something hot.”

          “Ah. So you’re the opposite of picky. Can you specify what sort of hot foods you like?”

          “Soup,” he ventured slowly at first, still watching Shion like he was a science project. Did he expect him to react strongly to soup of all things? “Stew. Coffee and tea if you count drinks."

          “Wanna get coffee sometime?”

          Nezumi’s smile was a quick and bright lightning flash just like those Shion first met him under, and then it was gone. “Confident that the rest of this trainwreck will be a success, huh your majesty?”

          “I think it’s going okay now,” Shion shrugged and placed another bag of salad exactly where he’d found it. “Right?”

          “If you read the nutrition facts of one more bag of salad...”

          Shion pouted. “Guess not.”

          Nezumi’s face was still unreadable.

          Shion reached for another salad bag, not breaking eye contact with Nezumi.

          Nezumi narrowed his eyes.

          The salad bag was slowly flipped in his hands and the list of components and nutritional facts was right there. Shion brought it to his face and began reading away. “Like you said yesterday, you can’t control me.” This salad wasn’t as appealing as one he’d found four minutes ago.

          When he lowered the bag and looked back up victoriously at Nezumi, the taller slate-haired man had a very clear and honest-seeming expression on his face. Irritation, but it was outweighed by his amusement. A smile was tugging at one corner of his lips. “You made a big show of reading some ingredients.”

          Shion bowed a little.

          “So stubborn.”

          “Well so are you! I don’t know much about you _besides_ that you’re stubborn!”

          “You’re not wrong.”

          “What else you got? Do you even _want_ me to know about you?”

          Nezumi’s bright-eyed amusement faded and he turned his face slightly away to sideye Shion a little.

          “Part of you must or you wouldn’t be here.”

          “You don’t know much about me,” Nezumi reminded him stonily. And that was that for the time being.

          He didn’t complain when Shion retrieved that one bag of salad that seemed so much better than the others. He persevered through the frozen aisle with Shion, who took his time there unlike any other shopper willingly did. He didn’t comment on how Shion inspected bags and bags of grapes without tasting a single one, even though Nezumi ate almost an entire bag’s worth during all that time Shion was focusing.

          Shion was the one to break their silence when he noticed that. It was broken with a loud gasp, afterwhich his words came out as a quick and thrilled whisper: “You’re a _grape thief!”_

          Nezumi popped another grape into his mouth and nodded.

          “Stubborn and a grape thief,” Shion hissed with rising excitement and piled a few bags of grapes into his cart without thinking. Maybe it was to compensate the store for Nezumi’s theft. Or maybe it was because he now knew that Nezumi ate grapes.

          Their back and forthing of quips returned after that. Another hour droned by. Shion had stopped pretending he had a squeaky wheel because whenever other shoppers stared in his direction, they tended to glance at him first and then stare at Nezumi for longer. He understood that. Nezumi was beautiful.

           Encounters with other shoppers died down fast. The torrent outside was nightmarish and sane people decided to quit while they still felt safe and take what groceries they had home. The rain didn’t bother Shion much. He was a little worried about the habitat surrounding N’Soix and the wildlife likely battling the river. Meanwhile, even though he never mentioned it, the rain did seem to bother Nezumi because of how long he stared at it whenever they saw the front windows. He was always too swept up in making fun of Shion to comment on it. Because of this, the shorter boy could tell Nezumi was enjoying himself despite how hard he tried to hide it. Even though he was _good_ at hiding it. Knowing Nezumi wasn’t forcing himself to be here made Shion’s body feel all light and warm. He also had a harder and harder time wiping all the smiles off his face, even when Nezumi mocked him for them.

          “You look like a crazy person,” Nezumi sighed with a shake of his head.

          Shion barely even tried to stifle the smile he was giving the groceries he piled onto the checkout conveyor for the very last clerk in the store.

          “S-swipe your card here,” came the meek voice of the clerk. She was a teenage girl who stared in utter captivation at Nezumi as if his face were the screen at a movie theatre, even though Shion was the one who was holding up the card to swipe.

          He did so, then thanked her warmly for all the help and wished her a safe travel home.

          “Y-yeah,” she nodded, never once taking her eyes off Nezumi.

          Nezumi ignored her completely.

          Automatic glass doors slid open as the boys approached them. The rain had already been beating so loudly against the storefront, but without the glass to filter the sounds it was deafening and caused Shion to flinch.

          Nezumi snickered at him about it.

          A weak, “Ahahah…” was Shion’s response. “Are we off to the fish market now?”

          Maybe Nezumi didn’t hear him. His silver eyes were darting back and forth across the nearly empty lot. There were two cars and a motorcycle

          The air being pushed in at them was cold so Shion gripped the shopping cart handle tighter, until even the pink scabs from his most recent bond flower injury turned white. He asked, “Nezumi?” a little louder.

          “Hm?”

          “Are you coming with me to the fish market--”

          Nezumi wrinkled his nose.

          “--or are you done for the day?” It had been a long shopping trip. Probably the most exciting one Shion had ever been on though.

          The slate-haired boy kept staring out at the rain and uttered another thoughtful, “Hm.”

          Shion followed his gaze and his eyes fell upon the motorcycle. He dropped his eyes to the helmet Nezumi had been carrying under his arm the entire time. “Oh Nezumi! I didn’t even realize! Can you even safely bike in rain like this?”

          “You’re doubting me, huh? Is that a dare?”

          “No! I’ll give you a ride home!”

          Nezumi replied quickly, “I shouldn’t leave my bike out here,” and stepped into the rain.

          Shion tried to follow, but the heavy cart immediately got stuck on the lip in the door. He shoved a little too hard to push it free and sent the cart wobbling into the rain.

          Once again, Nezumi caught it.

          Shion scampered up to reclaim his hold on the bar, and almost slipped within the first few steps.

          There was a solid inch of water at minimum for most of the lot despite it being relatively level. If he was hydroplaning on foot, he couldn’t imagine how scary it would be to drive. _Especially_ driving a motorcycle.

          Right when Shion was nearly to the cart, Nezumi claimed the entire space for himself and grabbed the bar. Shion tried to contest him for it, but Nezumi bumped him out of the way with his broader shoulders. With a smirk and a shove of the cart, Nezumi took off running it towards the three vehicles. They were all parked relatively close to each other at the very far end of the parking lot.

          Shion gave chase! Wobbly, slippy, chase.

          Nezumi kicked water at Shion when he got too close, causing Shion to shriek even though it didn’t matter because he was already completely drenched. Both of them were. Their hair was slicked to their skulls and cheeks and necks, shades darker than usual. Nezumi’s hair looked pitch black. Shion’s clothes were starting to rub his joints raw, but he didn’t let that bother him. He couldn’t help being _so_ happy, playing in the rain with this person he’d been curious about all his life, who he never actually thought he’d get the chance to have fun like this with.

          He laughed aloud before he splashed Nezumi back, then got splashed again in return. And just like that a battle was started.

          Nezumi was so beautiful in this rain. He was so beautiful all the time. Both the sly smiles he’d cast Shion throughout their grocery shopping and wide grins he made now in their battle lifted Shion’s heartbeat so high in his chest he worried it might block his airways. As strange as it was to consciously think about, Shion found Neumi’s pale and slightly cracked lips especially charming. Through most of their brief time together before now, Nezumi kept his face neutral, but whenever he cracked a real smile it was a very expressionate one that Shion couldn’t help grinning back at.

          Both boys were grinning wide now.

          Shion also loved to watch Nezumi’s stormy eyes open and close because of those thick slate eyelashes. They very slightly bounced when they stopped moving. It was like when Shion looked at Nezumi, his vision doubled in clarity beyond that of normal humans, even with rain often getting his eyes all blurry.

          Nezumi was also a lot more than just pretty. It came as a surprise to Shion, but he was fun to be with! He was playful. He was smart. He was witty in a tired way. Or maybe in a restrained way. Shion wondered what kind of quips Nezumi might have had in store for him if they became closer. He hoped he could find out someday.

          Nezumi was also _very_ cagey; his coworker in the ticketbooth had not been exaggerating. There were moments when Shion said something wrong and saw through the calm facade Nezumi wore. During those moments Shion felt like he’d accidentally cornered a wild animal. In those moments, Shion tried to pipe down and give Nezumi a little more space. He tried, but he was so curious and Nezumi’s company made him so happy. As amused and calm as Nezumi usually seemed, he also made Shion nervous for the wrong reasons. His pauses between sentences and the way his eyes narrowed and lips slightly pursed hinted to Shion how Nezumi curated everything he said. He kept information from Shion, and maybe outright lied about things. Every smile before now seemed to have some sort of intent besides just expression joy, like Nezumi made most of them just to throw Shion off from what he was really thinking.

          And now Shion couldn’t stop thinking things he didn’t want to think either.

          “Tired already, your highness?” Nezumi taunted. His smile right now seemed completely honest and completely real.

          Shion shook his head, partly to banish all of his quick-judgements and worries, partly to expel water from his eyes and partly to show Nezumi that no, he was not ready to give up.

          The battle raged on. At one point Shion used the shopping cart as a shield and even though what-would-have-been damaged by a splash was already damaged by the rain, Nezumi didn’t try it.

          Shion did. From then on it was his game to win.

          They soon hurried past the motorcycle. Shion tried to stop and yell to Nezumi about it, but he stopped too fast. He lost his balance. He fell.

          Both the splash that surrounded him and gasp of pain that escaped him should have been loud enough to alert Nezumi, but under all this rain they were silent. Blood began to pool in the deeping parking-lot-wide puddle.

          Nezumi stopped abruptly the instant Shion felt pain. He turned back with furrowing brows and narrowing eyes. Oh. He’d felt that too. Somewhere under all that dark clothing was another bloody injury.

          Shion’s heart was sinking deeper than the rest of him was. Day two of spending time with his soulmate and he’d managed to hurt him. He forgot to be careful.

          Nezumi left the cart where it was, raced over and stopped with unjustifiable grace after Shion’s clumsy fall. When he kneeled down beside Shion, the scientist realized that it was concern pinching the actor’s pale face, not anger or blame.

          Shion let his held breath go. He’d been holding it without knowing.

          “Easy,” Nezumi breathed. “Is there a first aid kit in your car?”

          Shion shook his head, no, and looked down at his elbow. The asphalt had scraped the top few layers of skin several inches from where it started. It also ripped up the sweater sleeve that had been around it. He wanted to cry. His arm hurt, but more importantly he felt like he utterly blew it. Nezumi’s and his first encounter of the day was a disastrous one, and now they would be parting on bad terms too. He squinted up through the rain and maybe the salt in his eyes at Nezumi’s corresponding elbow. Since he was wearing leather there was no way Shion could glean how bad his soulbond injury was.

          “C’mon, we’ll walk the rest of the way.”

          “Sorry,” Shion whispered shakily.

          Nezumi ignored that on purpose. Shion could tell because of the glare he received. It made Shion feel even worse.

          The red-eyed boy was pulled to his feet.

          After Nezumi retrieved the cart, he escorted Shion at a much-less-thrilling pace the rest of the way to his car.

          While they walked almost leisurely, that teenage clerk raced past them under the cover of a dinky broken umbrella to get to her own car. They reached Shion’s as she was turning hers on.

          “Nezumi. I _am_ sorry,” Shion tried again, a little firmer. The walk here had been just enough time to gather himself.

          Nezumi wasn’t looking. He was inspecting Shion’s car. A little white electric car partly owned by N’Soix’s ecology laboratory. It was a two-seater but it had plenty of space in the back for lab equipment and samples. And groceries.

          Shion unlocked it.

          The clerk’s car drove out of the parking lot, leaving them totally alone.

          Nezumi opened the back door of Shion’s electric car so they could start filling it with the food they’d drenched.

          “How do you feel?”

          Nezumi frowned and narrowed his eyes on Shion. “Can you not?”

          “Can I not what? Apologize?” He fidgeted then grabbed a bag of groceries from the cart. “No, I think I need to.” He transferred the bag to the back of the car. “That was dumb of me.”

          “Whatever. We were both dumb then.” Nezumi was grabbing two bags at once, like he was suddenly in a rush.

          “But _you_ didn’t fall.”

          “Coulda. Easily. And I was the instigator.”

          “Oh.” Shion replied doltishly. Then he slowly smiled. “Maybe _you_ should apologize to _me_ then?”

          Shion couldn’t hear it over the rain, but he could have almost sworn he saw Nezumi click his tongue and mouth to himself, _‘Smug little bastard.’_

          “You’re far more smug than me! Ten times more!”

          “Maybe because I deserve to be. _I’m_ not the one who fell on my butt.”

          “On my elbow! And you were _just_ making me feel better for that, traitor!”

          “Maybe I realized I didn’t want to coddle you.”

          “Coddle me?” Shion laughed. “You’re not my mom! It’s like you’re failing red-flower soulmates 101!”

          Nezumi seemed to withdraw from the rising fun instantly. He practically threw the last of the bags into the back of the car-- Shion noticed blood on them--and slammed the door down so fast it wobbled the car.

         “Ah… right.” Shion swallowed. “You’re not sure how you feel about… all that, huh?”

          His silver-eyed companion looked vacant and maybe a bit prickly.

          Shion inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. “Look. I see you’re having a hard time with… soulmate things?”

          “You don't want to get into that right now. Yesterday was the first time we talked since we were kids,” Nezumi hissed, coming back out of his trance in a snap when the s-word was mentioned. “I’m only here because you wanted help shopping. Not that you needed it. Picky label-reader.”

          Shion exhaled slowly again, and a shaky laugh rode on this one. “That’s true, I suppose. Thank you for coming with me.”

          “Don’t make me regret it now that it’s almost over.”

          “Okay. It’s okay, Nezumi. I’m done.” Shion bit down on his bottom lip a little. He didn’t feel done. He was just starting. So many nervous emotions were clawing their way up and he felt more tears prickling at his eyes.

          Nezumi side-eyed him. He also seemed to be able to tell that Shion wasn’t done.

          “I’m done,” Shion tried to convince himself.

          “No you’re not.”

          “Fine, I’m not.”

          A raindrop dripped off Nezumi’s eyelashes as he rolled his eyes. He folded his arms begrudgingly and leaned against the back of the electric car, then waved his arm in a _‘Go on then’_ type of gesture.

          “Really?”

          “It’s bound to happen sooner or later,” came his venomous response. “Spill your fucking heart out.”

          “That doesn’t help Nezumi, I’m already confused!”

          “That makes two of us.”

          Shion rubbed his eyes. “Okay. That’s okay, though right? Being confused? And it’s also okay that--”

          “Stop saying ‘okay’.”

          Shion frowned and folded his arms too. He chewed some words around in his mouth and tried again, “It’s _fine_ that you’re… how you are in regards to our soulmate bond.”

          “And how’s that in your expert opinion of, what, four hours?” Nezumi grumbled.

          “You don’t want to be my soulmate.”

          “I’m _not_ your soulmate.”

          Shion blinked a few times. Was he in denial? He didn’t know Nezumi very well at all, but he didn’t seem like the type of person who needed a reality check. Still, he pointed at his bloody elbow and said, “My injuries,” and he pointed then at Nezumi’s, “cause yours. And vice versa. I can tell you don’t want that sort of bond with me.”

          Nezumi huffed.

          “Whatever your reasons for that are, it doesn’t matter right now. I mean, it does matter to me. But… But I don't want to put you on the spot.” This was true. Shion didn’t want to force anything between the two of them. He wanted a natural relationship. He wanted to feel as comfortable and loved and safe with his soulmate as his soulmate felt with him. And maybe in Nezumi’s case, that meant taking it very slowly. Or even... “We don’t need to take this seriously. I’m fine with just… being with you.” _Now_ he didn’t know what he was saying. He thought of Safu and Ann. He thought of how happy Safu was with their situation even though the two weren’t romantically involved, even if their flowers were under the impression they should be. Could Shion do that? Was even that too much to ask of Nezumi?

          The angle of the rain had changed. It made it hard to see Nezumi very clearly, but he was standing still, still watching Shion.

          “Time or distance or whatever freedoms you need are just.. What you need. I’m okay. But I…” Shion swallowed. The words were coming out so calmly, but inside alarms were ringing. He kept thinking of his mom’s melancholy eyes whenever she spoke of her soulmate, and how furious he felt about it. Her soulmate had abandoned her. Had _risked_ her _life_ by abandoning her.

          It was strange to think about that.

          For as violent as meeting one’s soulmate always was, no one came out physically scarred. No one but Shion. Occasional complications from losing one’s soulmate, however, were well-documented. They weren’t pretty. Karan was extremely lucky she didn't suffer them.

          He tried to start again.“But I… I actually don’t know what I’m talking about anymore.”

          “I can tell.”

          “I’m probably pushing it, huh?”

          “Greatly.”

          “I’d just like a chance to keep hanging out and figure out what’s good for us, okay? _Now_ I’m done!”

          Nezumi’s head tilted slightly and a rivulet of rainwater poured directly between his eyes and down one side of his nose, suddenly streaming off his chin. “That’s fair.”

          “It is?” Yes, yes of course it was. He’d already experienced one complication, so why tempt fate with another?

          “Get in the car already, Shion.”

          Shion nodded quickly.

          “And wait there.”

          “Huh? Why?”

          Nezumi was already making his way to his bike and pointed a few times over his shoulder at the little electric car.

          Even though he was confused, Shion decided to obey. He always did. It had yet to cause him trouble, but it wasn’t one of his favorite traits. He got the feeling Nezumi was at the other end of that spectrum.

          The car quickly warmed him up. He turned on the  heated seats. There were napkins in the glove box. He padded several of them into the sleeve of his light blue sweater to help close the scrape and stop the bleeding. If only that could also stop Nezumi’s bleeding.

          Not long passed before he heard a single rap of fingers against the passenger window. They were Nezumi’s gloved fingers, still a little bloody. The red fingerprints were quickly washed away.

          Shion unlocked the door and saw that Nezumi was standing under that clear umbrella Shion had given him yesterday. It was closed and placed on the dashboard. Nezumi then sat in the passenger seat. He unzipped his jacket a little and pulled out some newly purchased anti-bacterial ointment and a dry roll of bandages.

          “Oh,” Shion uttered.

          Nezumi closed the door after himself.

          “Oh?” Shion said louder and glanced between the closed door and Nezumi several times.

          “Put those on,” Nezumi exhaled loudly and cranked the heat in the car up to its maximum. When Shion just stared at the bandages, he groaned, “Unless his majesty has no idea how to... Do you need me to?”

          “N-no! I can do it just fine,” Shion explained quickly and got to work pulling up his sleeve and uncapping the little bottle of medicine.

          By the time his elbow was all wound up nicely, he was perspiring in the terrible heat of his cramped little car. But at least Nezumi seemed weirdly content. His eyes were half-lidded and he’d declined the chair a bit. His arms were crossed and he was watching rain streak against the front window.

          “Thanks? We should do your elbow now.”

          “I can handle it.” Nezumi took the roll of bandages out of Shion’s hands without even looking at him. He started unrolling it to the length he thought he needed and deftly ripped that strip off. “You just focus on driving.”

          Shion gaped. “Driving you _home_?”

          “To the fish market, genius. That was your original plan, right? Or are you gonna let a little rain stop you?”

          “This,” Shion gestured at the downpour, “is _not_ a _little_ rain! And what about your bike?”

          Nezumi kept his attention on bandaging of his bloodied elbow-- Shion had a hard time containing his gasp upon seeing the little red flowers-- but nodded out the window to his side.

          Shion couldn’t see what he was nodding at. There was nothing there anymore. The motorcycle was gone. Oh. “Where did you leave it?”

          Nezumi finally looked over at Shion with that intense stare of deep inspection, like he wanted to read his mind. “It’s inside.”

          “Inside?”

          “The grocery store.”

          Shion’s jaw dropped and his eyes widened. “Inside _the grocery store_.”

          “Mhm.”

          “Where you got the medicine and bandages.”

          “Mhmmm.”

          “After the last person working there already went home?!”

          Nezumi seemed proud of himself. His eyes were shifting around Shion’s face slowly, noticing everywhere that twitched in repudiation.

          “You broke in?!”

          “Minus the breaking. Nobody will even notice if you drop me back off here after we go get whatever you want to get at the fish market.”

          “Are you kidding me?! You just--!! That’s a crime, Nezumi!”

          There was a mean spark in his eyes, but he still seemed strangely proud. He leaned forward and hissed, “And?”

          Shion recoiled as much as Nezumi had learned forward. He was a whole mess of different emotions, but most strongly he was overwhelmed. What kind of person was sitting in his car? What kind of person did fate expect him to share his life with? Besides a person with a quick, biting tongue he’d so-far mostly used to make Shion laugh. Besides the most beautiful man Shion had ever seen, with his dark arched eyebrows and sharp electric eyes that seemed to give Shion so much welcomed attention. Besides someone very strong who had already survived more beatings than Shion could count. Besides someone who was gentle with Shion when he fell on the asphalt and hurt Nezumi even more.

          Shion closed his eyes and forced himself to calm down. When he finally felt still, he opened them again.

          Nezumi was mostly focusing on binding his wound, but he looked up at Shion every so often. That mean spark of pride in his eyes remained. A few red petals had fallen to his lap.

          Shion cleared his throat and turned keys to start the car. “I’m good now. Thank you for the bandages.”

          Nezumi clicked his tongue.

          The drive out of the parking lot was cautious and quiet. There were other cars on the roads despite how businesses seemed to be closing early.

          One car ahead of them skidded past a red light and swerved around traffic to the other side of the road to avoid being hit. It was kind of miraculous.

          Miraculous.

          Shion felt like Nezumi choosing to accompany him to the fish market, despite the rain and all that had happened, was miraculous. They were both volatile dumpster-fire people wrapped up in unusual red or silver-eyed packages with very little patience for each other. But they were supposed to be soulmates? How? Why?

          Maybe Nezumi was asking himself the same thing.

          Shion glanced over at him. He was rubbing little shapes into his fogging window. Shion had to glance between it and the road a few times before he realized the drawings were a rat and a flower.

          Nezumi wiped the images away. “Keep your eyes on the road.”

          Shion did his best. He moved to turn on the radio, but Nezumi blocked his reach.

          “I’d rather listen to the rain.”

          Shion did his best to do that too.

          Whoomp, whoomp, whoomp, whoomp, whoomp. It was the windshield wipers that ended up catching Shion’s ear for the rest of their drive. He found himself drumming his fingers against the steering wheel to their rhythm. He wasn’t all the way back to being content. All the emotional whiplash was exhausting but at the same time exhilarating. He was more happy than he was distraught.

          Shion followed Nezumi’s earlier command and kept watching the road, even though he could feel Nezumi’s eyes on him again. He knew he was staring. Those eyes gave off an electric charge, after all.

          “What are you thinking about now, Nezumi?”

          “...You, your highness,” Nezumi admitted slowly, “and how strange you are.”

 


	6. Cravats and “Can I”s

          ‘I made it home safely!! TY for all your help today Nezumi‘.

          It was dark in Nezumi’s apartment so the blue light of his phone was especially harsh. He locked it to give his strained eyes some reprieve. Maybe he needed to give his nose reprieve too. The stench of fish lingered on his clothes and in his hair. He needed a shower.

          The least today’s torrent could have done was wash away the scent of fish, but he supposed his bad karma needed to take every opportunity it could to snub him.

          Nezumi sat against the wall under the windows. They didn’t let in much of the flickery orange streetlamp light because his blinds were shut. He was cold. He was still wet. He should have been miserable but he wasn’t. A resilient little smile still clung to his face. He kept picturing Shion’s speculative stares at him and at all the food and fish he inspected.

          So far he enjoyed his time spent with Shion.

          Shion hyper fixated on things. It made it easier for Nezumi to study his mannerisms throughout the day. In some ways Shion was robotic in nature: logical, purposeful and direct, but as polite as he could be despite that directness. He would repeat small actions over and over when he was thoughtful or nervous, like when he spun the umbrella throughout their first adult conversation. In other ways Shion was enigmatic. He could turn around and surprise Nezumi every time he finally seemed easy to predict.

          Wielding a broken hair-claw as a weapon.

          Winning a splash fight in a flooded parking lot.

          Spewing a barrage of excited lobster knowledge and then, despite all he knew, forgetting they had claws and reaching impulsively into a tank of live and unbound lobsters with his bare hands. When one immediately pinched his hand, he puffed out his cheeks and whined instead of causing a scene. It would have been helpful if he tried to retract his hand instead of freezing up, but Nezumi took care of it probably quicker than Shion could anyhow.

          Shion was both brilliant and foolish.

          Nezumi felt foolish at the moment too. He unlocked his phone to read the text one more time then locked it again.

          It had been read at least a hundred times already. There was no reason to keep staring at it. Nothing new to glean. No secret underlying message. Despite Shion being a puzzling person, he at least offered Nezumi all the pieces easily. Everything he said was almost too blunt, which still threw Nezumi for a loop. Nezumi had grown up with his life depending on if he could decode the motives of strangers. He was good at it. But he didn’t need to be good at it to get an idea of Shion’s motives. They were simple. He was curious about his soulmate, which was normal. He had resentment for people who abandoned their soulmates, which was normal. He seemed to want to put Nezumi’s needs before his own, which was… which was what?

          Nezumi’s smile was finally gone, replaced with a wrinkled brow.

          It didn’t sit right with him that Shion meant to be selfless. Humans were not naturally selfless creatures. Too much of that wasn’t good for them. The little Shion he’d met as a child, the one Nezumi thought of almost all his life, wasn’t selfless.

          Nezumi pushed himself upright, finally disgusted by the smell of fish.

          It had been several hours and the torrent outside had finally slowed to a normal drizzle. It was too late. Impoverished and industrial Lostblock, which Nezumi called his home, was paying the price for all the rain. It was the small part of N’Soix where the river cut through, and that river had flooded the place. Nezumi had to leave his motorcycle at a “friend's” and trudge through three to six inches of floodwater the last stretch of his journey to this shitty little apartment building he called his home.

          He stripped in the bathroom, stepped into the narrow shower box, and turned on the spray of water. The stream that ran between his eyes and down the burn marks on his back wasn’t perfectly clear.

           _“Can I have your number?” He remembered the way Shion fiddled with the volume buttons on the side of his phone. Raising it, lowering it, raising it, lowering it. Shion’s face didn’t display even an ounce of the nervousness his hands did. His eyes had been too busy scrutinizing the fish laid across small hills of ice._

          _Nezumi couldn’t remember if he answered him or just shrugged, but phones were exchanged. They had tapped their numbers in at drastically different speeds, Nezumi in an instant and Shion having to fix every other number he put in._

_“There you go!” Shion placed Nezumi’s phone back into his outstretched hand. There in his list of contacts was ‘Shion :)’ accompanied by a selfie Nezumi hadn’t even noticed the red-eyed boy take. Both of them were in that selfie, but while Shion looked happy and even brought his fingers up near his face to make a V for victory, Nezumi was glaring at a nearby stall with squid on ice._

_Shion sent him the first text while they were together just to test that it worked. It had been two emojis: a smiley face and the most simple flower in the emoji library. It wasn’t even the right color for an aster._

_Nezumi responded with a rat emoji._

_More chatter ensued as they browsed the fish market together. Shion eventually stopped to look at a plastic-wrapped group of frozen crayfish._

          The shampoo bottle was empty and Nezumi cursed it. He moved onto conditioner without it.

_He remembered being surprised that of all the fish in this market, Shion was most interested in crayfish._

_Crayfish was the poor-man’s lobster but Shion wanted crayfish even though he could afford lobster. Nezumi just knew he could. He judged foods nutritional values the way Nezumi judged prices, but for ten times as long. That was okay with Nezumi in a grocery store where the horrible stenches of crab and iced fish didn’t waft into his throat to suffocate him._

_“What’s so great about crayfish?” he had choked disdainfully when Shion refused to pick a few and let them leave._

_“A lot of things!” Shion’s scientist-or-whatever side jumped out brightly, even more brightly than he’d been inspecting the seafood. “They keep rivers and streams quite healthy and eat decaying things before they contaminate the water. They’re a major part of a healthy ecosystem.”_

_Nezumi had only squinted at him. He kept picturing him in that labcoat he’d seen him in earlier and wondering what sorts of things he used his sciencey brain on. Surely not crayfish?_

_“Do you dislike seafood, Nezumi? You’ve been looking green for awhile.”_

_Nezumi remembered pondering that for a moment. Nezumi didn’t trust the only seafood he could afford. All attempts to eat any had left him poisoned, but he would be willing to try again if he could afford the better stuff._

_“I know this sushi place--”_

_“You don’t even know if I want coffee yet,” Nezumi had reminded him with a playful shoulder bump._

_“Maybe it can be a two-in-one hangout, like today,” Shion countered simply. “It’s efficient.”_

_“Efficient,” Nezumi snorted and shook his head. “Unlike you.”_

_“I’m not efficient?”_

_“No, your majesty, most people finish their grocery shopping in an hour or two, not four.”_

_Shion’s very small, but very bright smile appeared. “Good thing I wouldn’t trade a fun four hours with you for an efficient two.”_

_“A pickup line? Really?” He was amused but resisted showing it this time._

_Shion seemed to pick up on his amusement anyways and smiled even wider while he shrugged._

Nezumi turned the faucet, stopping the contaminated water from drizzling down on him. He pressed his forehead against the wall and sighed resignedly, just like he had back when he’d experienced that conversation. Everything about this growing bond was too easy. Somehow, someday soon, something was bound to go wrong. Nezumi didn’t want to get comfortable.

          Shion shouldn’t have felt comfortable with him either.

          It wasn’t exactly an accident that Nezumi frightened Shion in the grocery store. He realized as he was removing his helmet in the parking lot that he was dressed too similarly to the day he’d broken into the bakery. Going home to change was far too much effort, so Nezumi just embraced it and decided to test Shion. He knew it was cruel, but he didn’t really care. Not until Shion shoved the cart at him and ran.

          An itch of pride arose in Nezumi as he remembered the way Shion had brandished a little makeshift weapon at him. It was foolish and stupid, yes, but it was also relieving. Shion seemed so very trusting and gentle. Before that moment, every threat Nezumi was aware of that approached Shion were met with no resistance, just wide-eyed staring. Nezumi had taken this as proof that Shion was only a liability. Just like so many other things, Shion surprised him with his hidden fighting spirit.

          But then Shion never asked if it had been Nezumi there in his bakery. Did he not want to know? Nezumi would tell him the truth about that particular topic if he asked.

          His rats greeted him as he left the bathroom in a towel. Their squeaks quickly turned demanding.

          He peeled an orange and diced up a few of the little segments which he left on the counter. The rats were stuffing their cheeks with those dicings when he sat back down under the windows, where no light could hit him.

          Across the room from him there was a figure partly hidden by the bookshelves. Something glinted once in their hand.

          Nezumi popped an orange segment into his mouth and started chewing, unbothered.

          The figure didn’t move. The shape of their head wasn’t human. There were horns that curled up and back off the head and fan-like ears. Ah, it was that mask, the one Rita had boastfully showed him after finishing it, intended for the dragon in Sleeping Beauty. Now the mask belong to the wretch that once tried to stab him in his dressing room.

          If the attacker were really here, not just another new trick his mind was playing on him, Nezumi knew exactly what he would do. There were plenty of things in the room to break and use as weapons: wooden chairs, rusty nails, and yes, even a hair claw. There were also hammers, wrenches, screwdrivers. The actual weapons were a knife still hidden in his boots by the door and the gun he kept in the otherwise emptied toolbox under his sink.

          Shion may have been out of his element when he tried to defend himself from a masked stranger, but Nezumi wasn’t. He’d been attacked before. Almost every time he made it out victorious, the other person didn’t make it out at all.

          He didn’t like letting threats continue to exist.

 

❀❀❀

          

          “Whaaaaaat?! Since when are you good at taking care of plants?!”

          Shion heard Safu’s concise response of, “I’m not, Ann. These are Shion’s plants.” Her usual composure sounded especially flat compared to the rising and falling thrill in her soulmate’s voice. “This is Shion’s house.” Safu sat under a few hanging ferns as well as having her back to a braided money tree  They were so vibrant, Ann had at first assumed they were plastic.

          “Oh haha, I forgot!”

          “Again.”

          Shion looked up at Safu. Again. He was amazed by this new side of her.

          She glanced at the tablet in her lap every time she finished a few paragraphs of her patients’ lab reports. She wasn’t an aloof person by any means, but she did have trouble conveying her feelings. The level of clear fondness in her gaze at the tablet, where Ann’s face resided, was uncharacteristic of her. “Visiting N’Soix will help your brain cement that,” she hypothesized evenly. “Then you can meet Shion and see the plants. You’ve only seen around eleven or twelve percent of the ones he keeps indoors.”

          “That can’t be true!” Ann exclaimed. “Unless he lives in a greenhouse or somethin’? But that doesn’t look like a greenhouse.”

          “No, but he’s an ecologist, remember? He likes nature. He’s good with plants.” One of her blank but still loving looks was cast at Shion.

          He smiled back.

          It was morning and the sun had just come up on the fifth day since the rainstorm, and since he’d grocery shopped with Nezumi. Light streamed through Shion’s sliding glass backdoor, illuminating dust particles in the air and the entire living room Shion and Safu sat in. The carpet, oak walls and furniture were all light, so light bounced around easily in here. That was why this was one of the rooms he’d populated with some of his most demanding plants. Still, there was plenty space for Shion and Safu and all their papers, printed graph sheets, laptops, and empty takeout boxes which had once contained orange curry, Safu’s breakfast of choice. Each person was looking at lab reports of completely different things, trying to assess the damage done to their patients. Shion’s was that of the wildlife reserve, specifically the half-drowned moss and ivy populations which provided habitat for several species of endangered beetles and lightning bugs. The heavy rain had given the moss edema.

          “Turn me to see Shion!” he heard Ann suddenly ask.

          He perked his head up from his work. Maybe a little too fast though. He’d woken up that morning with a sore muscle or something in his chest, and it stung just enough to cause him to cringe. Luckily Ann wasn't turned to him yet or she might have thought he was cringing at her.

          “Hi Shion, Hi! Are you there?! Shion can you hear me?”

          Safu rolled her eyes and turned the tablet screen until Shion and the redheaded girl could see each other. She seemed to be sitting on a couch wearing a bright yellow hoodie that resembled some kind of pop culture video game monster. Behind the couch was a kitchen where the pantry doors were left wide open. She leaned toward the screen as if that might bring Shion closer to her and exclaimed, “Oh! Your hair is pure white now! You almost look like an old man from this distance.”

          He awkwardly scooted a bit closer.

          “Yep, as of this morning,” Safu confirmed. “I’ve been checking all those little hairs every day and today was the first I couldn’t find a single one that was brown or grey. Goodnight sweet brunette prince, good morning old man hair.”

          “It's still soft,” Shion added.

          “Very soft.”

          “Yeah wow,” Ann agreed, “I hope it won’t weird you out when we meet and I forget to ask before I try to feel it, ahhhahh…”

          Safu sighed. “Oh she absolutely will. She has no concept of boundaries.”

          “It really does look cool though.” Ann's green eyes hazed and a big smile slid across her freckled face, “Mm, mm! Just imagine a white-haired Safu, huh? Man, Safu, you’d look like some sorta cool action or horror movie protagonist.”

          “Doesn’t Shion?” Safu asked with a quirked eyebrow.

          Ann’s face fell a little as she looked him over, and then she rubbed the back of her head in embarrassment. “Ah, no…It’s probably just because you’re wearing a cooking apron.”

          “Hm, well what if I was the protagonist of a cooking show?”

          “Bleh. Waste of the edgy red eyes. Just put on all black, maybe something leather, and a cool ratty cloak and bam! Ready to save the day and fight crime.”

          Shion had a very hard time imagining himself in any of those things. Or fighting crime. His latest attempt to do anything close was to break a plastic hair product and point it at his soulmate. Running into a burning building, even if it was for less than a minute, was day-saving to some capacity. But a ratty cloak would have made that a lot more dangerous.

          “You’re sweet though, so I like you a lot more as a cooking show protagonist anyhow,” Ann amended. Behind her, in the kitchen, someone moved into the camera. They opened the fridge and then Ann tilted her head and blocked them from Shion’s view. “Have you and your mom ever made wedding cakes?”

          At once Shion’s, “Yep!” and Safu’s, “Of course!” answered Ann.

          “I wanna try! I _just_ went to a wedding and the cake was the best I’ve ever had. I dunno if that’s a specific wedding cake recipe or if it was just that the bakers were reeeaaalllly gooood.”

          “Karan’s wedding cakes are also ‘ _reeeaaalllly gooood_ ’ Ann,” Safu promised her with a swift nod, even though only Shion could see it since she was still facing the tablet at Shion.

          Ann hummed suspiciously. “When have either of you been to a wedding, Safu? You told me you weren’t close with, well, anyone but your grandma, Shion, and his mom.”

          “Karan’s regulars all really love her, so they often invite her to their weddings. Then she asks if she can bring Shion and I.”

          Ann’s delighted, singsongy, “Awww!” was softer than her usual somewhat harsh voice. “That’s so sweet. Your mom is so sweet, Shion.”

          Shion nodded at her praise and answered more of Ann’s questions about the bakery.

          The person in Ann’s background eventually moved from behind her and started shuffling through one of the open cupboards. Based on the broad shoulders and narrow hips, they appeared male, and they had short blond hair.

          A sinking distaste had formed in Shion’s stomach but he tried to keep it hidden. That boy in Ann’s kitchen must have been the reason Ann and Safu weren’t even attempting to be in the kind of relationship their flowers deemed best for them. He was that boyfriend of three years whom she was apparently oh-so serious about.

          Upon seeing Shion cringe again and grasp at his chest, Safu turned the tablet back to face herself and whispered, “Heartburn?”

          “Pulled muscle.”

          “You sure? I’ve had heartburn from orange curry several times.”

          Shion never had. Besides, they’d finished their unusual breakfast over an hour ago. Why would he be having heartburn now?

          “Oi, is that Safu? Hi Safu!” came another excited voice, though this one was a lot deeper.

          “Hello Roy,” Safu greeted politely.

          “Woah! Since when are you so good at taking care of plants?!”

          As much as Shion wanted to learn more about the girl Safu was meant to be with as well as her boyfriend, he was grateful when his phone buzzed and distracted him from them all. He settled back down to his spot on the carpet and unlocked the phone, then froze.

          ‘busy?‘ It was from Nezumi.

          He snatched up his phone to type and then correct his originally clumsily written, ‘Hello Nezumi, I’m not busy‘.

          No answer, at least not immediately. He barely heard the drone of Safu explaining to Roy and Ann how Shion was good with plants, and then another text lit his screen. It was a picture of a snail on broken concrete. No words accompanied it.

          Shion grinned and replied, ‘I love her!!!‘

          ‘its aher?‘ Another text followed quickly after. ‘how can u tell?‘

          ‘I can’t, I just guessed. Nobody can tell. Snails are a hermaphroditic species‘.

          A long wait. Then Nezumi sent him an even closer and clearer picture of the snail.

          This tended to be how conversations Nezumi initiated went. He didn’t really seem to want to talk, but he’d stumble across things he thought Shion might like and send him pictures. Most of the conversations Shion initiated were _‘Hey how are you’_ s and _‘Do you want to hang out’_ s. Nezumi only ever answered those with one word texts of _‘busy’_ or _‘no’_ . The one time Shion got in a long over-text conversation with Nezumi over text it was about Karan. She had wanted to thank Nezumi for looking out for Shion, so Shion sent him a text relaying that. Then when Nezumi seemed curious, the boys launched into how wonderful of a mother she was. Shion told Nezumi ten different stories of her wonder-mom-ing throughout his childhood. Nezumi was _very_ engaged throughout that conversation. It made Shion wonder about his relationship with his own mother.

          ‘Nezumi are you busy?‘

          Another picture of the snail arrived. Then nothing.

          Shion excused himself from the video call, which was now mostly Roy and Ann babbling at each other while Safu read reports in silence.

          She gave him a thumbs up as he left.

          He went upstairs and paused directly under one of the skylights, which set him aglow, as a new text arrived.

          ‘if i said i was busy now u would nkow i was lying‘.

          Not necessarily. Even when busy, Shion could make time for snails, albeit his main job did involve looking at snails anyways.

          ‘gss u caught me‘.

          ‘Guess I did. How are you?‘

          ‘fine‘.

          ‘Have you gone back to the Night’s Dream?‘

          ‘not yet‘.

          ‘But you will?‘

          ‘yeah‘. Nezumi then sent Shion another picture of the snail. In this picture she was emerging from her shell in wet grass under a bush.

          ‘Did you move her?‘

          ‘detective shion at it again‘.

          Shion chuckled approvingly. He hadn’t pegged Nezumi being the type to have much compassion for little lost souls.

          ‘I'm glad you moved her and are going back to the theatre, Nezumi’.

          ‘the thetr’s my job. ofc i’d go bck‘.

          ‘Yes!! I walked over yesterday. Met this friendly duo, a tall girl and the long haired guy who played prince charming mediocrely. They asked about you but I didn’t say much. Did you know repairs for the fire damage have already started?‘

          ‘sorta?‘

          ‘I don’t think they even had time for a proper investigation‘.

          ‘mdm fei wouldn’t want anyon einvestigting anyways bcuz shes alwys hiding things’. Before Shion finished typing out his next text, Nezumi added, ‘also dobt she got the buildng insured‘.

          ‘Who’s “mdm Fei”?’

          ‘manager. Madame Fei, littl old owman with black bob hair n long fake nails’.

          It didn’t ring even the slightest bell, but since Shion was unconscious for most of his time backstage he supposed that wasn’t surprising. The rest of that time was spent focused entirely on his then-furious soulmate.

          ‘stay away from her‘.

          Shion raised his eyebrows. This was a curious message. He didn’t know enough about Nezumi’s affairs to even guess why he wouldn’t want Shion talking to his manager. She was probably just mean, but he couldn’t stop himself from worrying if she was somehow dangerous.

          ‘Is that why you haven’t gone back? Because of Madame Fei?‘

          ‘nah she has nthing to do with it‘.

          ‘Why then?‘

          Shion waited in the sun streaming down from the skylight. He was brighter than anything else in his home at the moment. The warmth felt good on his shoulders and the back of his head, but the long wait between texts from Nezumi was starting to feel sour.

          Finally it arrived: ‘u r too nosy‘.

          ‘Sorry‘.

          ‘my turn then’, Nezumi texted. ‘how r u ur majesty‘.

          He finally stepped out of the skylight beam to take the last few steps into his room, typing happily, and then reluctantly, and then happily again. He sat on his bed. It faced a whole wall of floor-to-ceiling windows and a plant filled patio.

          For the first time since seeing Nezumi in person, their conversation was both long and didn’t feel forced. There was something nagging at Shion though. He kept typing, ‘Do you want to hang out?’ and deleting it again in favor of something else. He was enjoying this chat too much for it to abruptly end with rejection.

          ‘ur beetle population will come bsck‘, Nezumi offered in reply to Shion explaining his current problem.

          ‘or migrate’, Shion meant to send, but his breath caught when he realized, in a moment of carelessness, he sent, ‘Do you want to hang out?or migrate’. Nezumi’s reply would be yet another ‘no’ and then he wouldn’t answer any of Shion’s texts afterwards until he found another bug to send to him.

          The phone screen lit up. The newest text from Nezumi read as, ‘where would we migrate to?’

          Shion exhaled loudly and bunched the duvet up in his arms, building a huggable form. ‘That was an accident, I’m glad you’re still here’.

          ‘r all ur invites accidents?’

          ‘Just this one. Can I really invite you out? You’re interested in that now?’

          ‘when?’

          ‘I’m needed at the lab in an hour, but maybe tomorrow? Afternoon?’

          ‘where?’

          Shion grinned. He knew just the place.

          

          

❀❀❀

 

          A small brown hand extended towards him with the empty palm up.

          Nezumi grumbled and dropped a few bloodied rings into the palm.

          The rings were brought up to the face of his contact, a short-statured _opportunist_ with long messy brown hair that obscured part of their androgynous face. They examined the rings closely, but because of their hair Nezumi couldn’t make out their expressions. Finally they looked up at him. “Good job, Nezumi.”

          He kept watching them coolly.

          The rings were quickly spirited into the pocket of his contact’s ratty coat. “What did you do with him after?”

          “Meaning?”

          “Didja kill him or did you just leave?”

          “If you wanted me to kill him you should have said so.”

          “I didn’t say and I don’t have a preference,” they said and rubbed the blood on their hands off on their coat. The new bloodstains joined several old ones. “But I’d still like to know in case he tries anything again.”

          Nezumi folded his arms. “Left him in a culvert under the freeway. He knows you’re the one who sent me and not to mess with you again unless he has a death wish.”

          His contact clapped and smiled. “Then I’m satisfied! Should we move onto my end of the deal then?”

          He nodded.

          “Just so you know, it was a lot more work than I expected, so be grateful I don’t _add_ another favor to the list you owe me instead of subtracting one.”

          “Get on with it.”

          “Fine. You were right.” They swept some of the hair out of their eyes with now-empty hands. When they did, they revealed a small cut above their eyebrow. White petals poked out of that cut. “The Night’s Dream fire was set intentionally.”

          “Fuck,” Nezumi growled.

          “Accelerants were used. You know, like,” they waved one hand around vaguely and the other found its way to the head of a sleepy looking doberman, “with gasoline.”

          “Where?”

          “Mostly in empty hallways and rooms just off the lobby.”

          Nezumi rubbed his jaw, picturing it and aimlessly glaring at the pack of dogs that wove through the stacks of abandoned radiators, tires and other scraps. The scraps in this rusty junkyard piled several stories high at points, so the dogs had many places to hide, but most sat in plain view. Those dogs wagged their tails every time they looked at his short conversation partner.

          This partner, a shady character rather infamous to the residents of LostBlock, was called Inukashi.

          “Where’d they leave their gas can?”

          “Gas _cans_. This was done by a group, hence the multiple starting places of the fire,” Inukashi explained irritably with a deep frown. Even sharing a space with Nezumi felt like a chore to them. Nezumi knew this because he felt the same about Inukashi. As useful as they were to each other, they didn’t like each other. “The gas cans were abandoned in the alley beside some burnout tracks from a big vehicle. Looked like it coulda’ only just fit in that alleyway. Witnesses were all over the place about it though.”

          “Did any mention a windowless grey van?”

          Inukashi shrugged. “Eh, I’d say maybe a third of ‘em. Not very reliable, those patrons of the arts.”

          Mostly to himself, Nezumi whispered, “Maybe there were multiple vehicles.”

          Inukashi shrugged again. Then they nodded behind them at a little metal shack half buried by a mound of scrap that had collapsed onto its roof. “I’ve got one more thing you might find interestin’. And I had to pay for it and _that’s_ another reason you should be grateful I’m not tacking on one more favor.”

          Nezumi followed a few paces behind the dog lover, who shoved their hands into their coat pockets and walked towards the shack with a slouch. Inside was barren besides the mattresses, dogs and dog beds strewn across the floor.

          Not keen on moving past nearly-wild animals he didn’t know, Nezumi waited in the doorway.

          Inukashi hopped through the beds to make their way to a dresser. There was something square on the dresser.

          Nezumi released a displeased groan when Inukashi held that dark thing up for him.

          It was a cassette tape.

          “It’s not the 90’s, Inukashi. How am I supposed to watch it?”

          “Dunno, but I thought it was pretty neat so you better get on it.” Inukashi tossed Nezumi the tape.

          He caught it and spun it over in his hands but there was no label.

          “It’s security footage.”

          Nezumi’s, _“great”_ dripped with sarcasm. He stashed the tape in his coat, no longer keen on his upcoming trip to the library for once in his life. “If that’s all?”

          “That’s all.” They grinned wolfishly, “Have a nice date with that sweet little baker tomorrow.”

          Inukashi wasn’t even worth the glare Nezumi cast them.

          “You know, I just had a thought,” they called after him.

          He stopped before he made it to his bike and looked back at the teen, who was now leaning in the doorframe Nezumi had just been in. “How rare.”

          “Rare?! You don’t believe that or you wouldn’t have had me to investigate for you.”

          He tsked.

          They grinned again. “Remember that hospital bodyguard?”

          He made an unimpressed face. “Not really, besides that he was annoying.”

          “You said you didn’t know who hired the guy if not Madame Fei. That still the case?”

          Nezumi narrowed his eyes and slowly nodded once.

          Inukashi continued to stare at him with mean-spirited interest for a few moments before standing upright suddenly and brightly declaring, “How interesting! See you next time I need a hit, I guess.”

          Dogs began standing. Growls arose in their throats.

          It was time to go.

          Nezumi didn’t dally. He was on his bike hurtling along the pothole ridden roads of Lostblock soon after, scowling at all he saw.

 

❀❀❀

 

          This settled it. Shion was either using him, or he thought chores and fun were the same thing.

          The latter felt pretty accurate for Shion.

          It was the day of the proposed hang out, and the boys stood in front of Karan’s bakery. The lunch hour had just passed, along with the following desert rush which populated the bakery the most. It would be calm until the dinner rush. Nezumi came here thinking he would just be picking Shion up, and that Shion would tell him their real destination on the way. But no, _this_ was the destination.

          “Here.” The white haired boy held out a dark apron. His face was searching, already trying to read him like all those items in the grocery store. “I saw it awhile ago and…”

          Nezumi raised the apron up and let it unfold. Ah. A massive grey stormcloud in which purple lightning streaks were frozen inside made up most of the image, while dark green drippy pine trees lined the bottom of the apron.

          “I dunno, I just thought it suited you.”

          Nezumi looked past the apron _\-- the gift --_ at Shion. There was reluctance in his red eyes.

          “Why.” It came out colder than Nezumi intended.

          “You can’t just bake in a professional eatery without an apron.”

          “Why are you giving me one as a _gift.”_

          Shion swallowed. “That’s bad? You’re reacting like it’s bad.”

          Nezumi dropped his eyes back to the apron and turned it over in his hands. The garment was dripping with sentimentality. The two of them first met under a storm like this. “It’s… not bad.” But it made Nezumi feel pressured.

          “Safu told me to wait and see for a while before I gave it to you. I guess I should have listened. I just thought now felt appropriate.”

          Nezumi clenched his jaw. He wasn’t the kind to reject gifts, though he was the kind to immediately pawn them off. Receiving a gift from Shion, like the soulmate bond itself, felt like being cornered into signing a contract.

          “You know, I’ve sort of been considering those pictures as gifts too,” Shion added with a little smile. It was very small, very hopeful, and it vanished as soon as it appeared when Shion seemed to decide a poker face suited this situation better. “I’m not expecting anything out of this. No return gifts, no promises about anything, or--”

          “Just a little free labor.”

          Shion paused for a moment. Then his eyes widened and he sucked air in fast through his teeth. “Oh no, _I am!”_

          The darkness in Nezumi's eyes faded. “Easy, your majesty. I’m up for it.”

          “I’ll pay you, of course.”

          “That makes it even weirder.”

          “But you need it, don’t you? You haven’t been working at the theatre in weeks.”

          That was true. Nezumi’s reserve funds were running low. But he didn’t want to refill them through Shion. “I’ve got other means of income.” That was also true.

          Shion exhaled and the tension trickled off him, loosening his shoulders. He slumped against the glass storefront beside the door. “That’s a relief. And Nezumi, I really didn’t invite you or get you that apron for any particular reason. I just wanted to get it for you _because_.”

          Nezumi slung the apron over his shoulder. “Thank you for the apron, your majesty.”

          Shion’s tightened his lips like a child thinking about a difficult math problem. “You’re just saying that because you feel bad for me.”

          “I’m as transparent as you are now, huh?”

          “Can you tell me when it would be appropriate to give you gifts?”

          Nezumi wasn’t sure it ever would be. “We’ll see.”

          “Okay. Uh, if it didn’t come with weird baggage, would you like it?”

          A smile snuck onto Nezumi’s face and he sideyed the pines on the apron. It reminded him of those misty mountains he was born among, and it was lovely. “I might already like it.”

          Shion raised his chin a little and beamed. An especially fascinating shade of pink bloomed across his cheeks and pooled in his ears, drawing Nezumi’s eyes. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Shion blush before. “You’re welcome, Nezumi.”

          Nezumi nodded. He could already see the blush fading. He wanted to keep a mental image of it forever.

          “Let’s go inside. We’ve got work to do.” Shion turned and pushed his way through the door into the bakery.

          The bell chimed, catching the attention of the only two customers in the store at the moment: a tall gaunt man and his tiny daughter. They were both wearing doughnut frosting all around their mouths. The man looked between Shion and Nezumi several times as they passed him, and then cupped one hand to his face and loudly whispered, “You treat Shion right, beanpole. He’s a good lad.” Then he gave him a double thumbs up, and his daughter mimicked her father’s gesture.

          Shion looked flustered and tried to pull Nezumi along after him at a quicker pace, but Nezumi barely acknowledged him or the customer. He was drinking in the interior of the room.

          Beige and seashell white were the two most prominent colors he saw. There were three booths and a circular oak table surrounded by rocking chairs. The table was close to the window. People who sat there could look over the one display case with fake treats to see the park. There was a hanging fern in every corner of the room. The front desk was small, but it had enough room for the cash register and to slide baked goods and money back and forth across. It was wedged between two somewhat tall glass display cases where shelves and shelves of treats were stocked. Framed pictures of cakes, pies, and macaroon stacks hung from the walls. One picture in the back, between the door to the kitchen and the chalkboard menu, was of Karah and Shion. It was from maybe a year ago. It was jarring for Nezumi to see Shion with brown hair and eyes when he wasn’t even fully used to seeing him with snowy white hair.

          Karan was pulling a batch of cupcakes from an oven when Shion finally pulled Nezumi through the flapping kitchen door. “Ah, there you are! It’s so,” Her eyes shifted back and forth across Nezumi’s face while excitement built in her own, “ _so_ nice to see you again, Nezumi.”

          “Hello, Karan,” Nezumi replied evenly, hiding the twinge of guilt he felt from his face and voice. “It’s nice to see you again too.” She must have worried about her son because of him. He hated the idea of being the reason a good mother like Karan worried.

          He wasn’t lying when he said she was nice to see. Even when exhausted, with sweat beads and dark hair strands plastered to her forehead, she filled the air around her with pleasantness and peace.

          “We’ll take it from here, mom. You can go on your lunch break.”

          “You’ve both eaten already?”

          Shion let out a small “oh!” and looked questioningly up at Nezumi.

          “I’ve eaten,” he lied. He had assumed he and Shion might be going somewhere to eat and didn’t have money for two separate lunches.

          His lie seemed to convince both mother and son. Both of their faintly concerned stares became content. Karan went up the stairs at far corner of the room while Shion gestured Nezumi over to the sink.

          Nezumi put on his apron and started tying his hair up.

          Shion was quick in this environment. He came and went through the flapping door, making a mental list for himself of all the things that would need restocking before the after-dinner rush. The way he’d very quietly exclaim the names of treats under his breath was endearing. But when he came back into the kitchen and saw Nezumi wearing the apron he’d gifted him, he cut himself off mid, “Pear Birnbr-- _ah.”_

          Nezumi gave his ponytail one more loop and turned to wash his hands in the sink. He watched the very-still Shion from the corner of his eye. “What’s the matter, your majesty?”

          Shion startled and then smiled feebly as another splash of pink touched his cheeks, “I knew that apron would suit you. When I saw it, I thought about…err...” His eyes widened and he suddenly looked distraught, mostly at the floor where his eyes dropped to. He stamped a foot softly, as if the floor deserved it.

          “Out with it.”

          “Um… I thought about you? Uh… in it?” He risked a glance up, and upon seeing Nezumi’s narrow-eyed grin he returned his gaze to the floor with urgency. “Is that bad?”

          Nezumi turned off the sink and wiped his hands on a towel, quietly, still regarding the shorter boy with amusement.

          “It’s a very Nezumi apron, so picturing you in it is quite normal.”

          “Sure, sure, but was I in anything else besides the apron?”

          “O-of course!” Shion half-shrieked at the beige and off-white diagonal floor tiles. His cheeks and ears were a very deep rosy pink now.

          “Of course,” Nezumi repeated with a snicker.

          Shion’s staring contest with the floor showed no signs of ending, so Nezumi approached him. Shion tensed up when Nezumi leaned down until he was level with the shorter boy’s face.

          His smug smile was as wide as ever. “And what are you thinking now?”

          “How immature you are,” Shion huffed. He stepped around Nezumi to pull something out of a cupboard in the back of the room and slam it down onto an empty counter. “Flip through this and find a recipe you’re interested in baking. I’m going to finish my mom’s cupcakes.” Shion didn’t look at Nezumi again for awhile.

          One page in the cookbook interested Nezumi more than the others. It had a photo of a creme-filled croissant twisted like a bowtie with flakey browned edges. The instructions were full of misspelled words written in pink crayon and the page was yellowed more than most of the others.

          “Interested in that one?”

          “What’s it called?” Nezumi asked, unable to make out the scrawl at the top of the page.

          “A cravat pastry. I helped come up with them,” Shion declared with a puffed out chest.

          “I didn’t see any of them up front.”

          “Ah, well, my mom was well-known for them back in the neighborhood I was born in. When we moved to the city when I was a kid, the pastries didn’t really hold up as well here. We stopped making them pretty soon after.”

          “Was that the house with the garden?”

          “That’s the one. Where we,” he got a bit quieter, “met.”

          “And you don’t live there now.”

          “Ooh, why?” Shion smirked for the first time Nezumi had seen. It was a goofy smirk with bright happy eyes. “Did you stalk it?”

          “Mighta considered it once.”

          “Don’t worry. If you’re ever feeling nostalgic for it, my new home is a lot like it, but more… private? It’s like if that house got teleported into the woods.”

          “Ah, of course. The nature scientist must immerse himself in it.”

          “Exactly.”

          One of the ovens dinged.

          Nezumi watched how efficiently the white-haired baker retrieved this new batch of cupcakes and set them on clear stovetop.

          Shion returned to his side and restarted their conversation with, “So! Wanna start on a batch of cravats?”

          “You said they don’t sell.”

          “Doesn't’ matter. This is supposed to be fun.”

          Nezumi blinked once. “Okay. Cravats.”

          Shion nodded and guided Nezumi around the room, directing him on which ingredients to pull out, where in the room had the space to begin the process of mixing and kneading the dough. Occasionally Shion would leave him to answer the ding of a new customer, and Nezumi would just stand there stupidly. He didn’t know how to bake. He occasionally made his own meals, chopping and frying vegetables and baking meat in the oven, but he never baked anything bready. Lots of the words in the cookbook sounded like gibberish to him.

          “You’ll get the hang of it. Even if you don’t, as long as you’re enjoying baking, I’m happy,” Shion told him when Nezumi stated his inexperience.

          When they had twisted just a couple doughy strips onto a cooking sheet, Shion suddenly gasped.

          “What?”

          “The cupcakes should be cool now.”

          They started icing them. Shion did his best to instruct him how to do that, and demonstrated several times. All of his cupcakes’ toppings were almost spherical and tipped with a delicate little curl.

          Nezumi’s cupcakes looked like they were topped with wrinkly yellow trash bags. He regarded them coldly. “Nobody will buy these.”

          “That’s not why I invited you,” Shion reminded him. He transferred all the cupcakes, ugly ones included, to a tray and took them up front.

          Nezumi returned to flattening little strips of dough for the cravats and twisting them as he placed them on the cooking sheet. It was calming and thrilling all at once. Everything about this place had that aura. Even the sugary scent hanging in the air. He glanced up at the door to the alley, which was now locked up with something much more heavy duty. A black marker circle was drawn in the door where a peephole would be. Maybe Karan planned to have one installed. Maybe she was paranoid now.

          Nezumi looked back down at the cravats but didn’t actually see them. He remembered when he first saw Karan in this kitchen. The bandana wrapped around her head. The muted fear on her face. The way that fear contorted into something visceral when her son had ducked under her arms into danger just to see what had frozen her solid.

          Nezumi's hand dipped into an empty bowl. There was no more dough. He’d turned it all into woven cravats.

          “It’s been awhile,” Nezumi heard the breezy voice of Karan herself. She was standing with her hands clasped and wearing an admiring smile at the unbaked pastries. “Those are what got Shion interested in baking in the first place.”

          Nezumi regarded her quietly.

          “But he never liked _eating_ them,” She chuckled softly. “For the year or so we made them, he was in this long phase where he didn’t think any desert was tasty unless it contained fruit jelly. However, he didn’t like making fruit jelly.”

          Nezumi glanced at the batch of raspberry tart filling Shion had started while Nezumi scoured the book for something to start with. “Seems like he grew out of that.”

          “Oh yes. Now his very favorite thing to make is cherry pie and that involves a very long process with the fruit,” she said while donning an apron. She made her way over to the sink to wash her hands.

          “I’ve never had cherry pie,” Nezumi admitted. He slid the baking sheet full of cravats into the oven after checking and double checking the crayon-scrawl for how long to set the timer.

          “Shion’s is quite delicious.” Karan dried her hands on the same towel Nezumi and Shion had. “He and I make them differently so we have two cherry pies in the menu.”

          That’s when Shion burst back through the flapping doors and announced, “We’ve got a special order now. Hi mom. A dozen caramel and mocha religieuse to be picked up in a few hours.”

          Nezumi had no idea what rele-whatever was

          “Oh, that’s a fun one,” Karan hummed brightly.

          “Do you want to help us?” He looked at Nezumi and offered an apologetic smile. “It’s a bit of a complicated recipe.”

          “No, no, I want to give you boys your space. I’ll handle the front from now on.” Right before she skittered through the door she called back, “You two have fun.”

          Shion shook his head and made his way to the sink again.

          “Didn’t even like cravats, huh?” Nezumi said.

          “Nope! But it’s been so long, I don’t know if that would be true today.” He dried his hands. “Especially considering things always taste better when you bake them with a friend.”

          Nezumi considered this word. “A friend, huh?”

          “It’s safe to say we’re friendly, right?”

          That didn’t mean they were friends. Enjoying time spent together did seem like something friends did, but Nezumi had no “friends” he didn’t want something from. He didn’t want anything from Shion. But Shion _did_ want something from him. An understandable something, considering fate had thrust the responsibility of Shion’s wellbeing onto Nezumi, and Nezumi’s onto him.

          The words had been chewed around in Nezumi’s mouth for too long now.

          Shion’s eyes were wide and he was starting to retract into himself. “Nezumi I’m sorry.”

          “Don’t be.”

          “Let’s work on that religieuse.”

          Nezumi followed Shion over to the fridges and took the ingredients he was handed. The words came out cautiously as he admitted, “We _can be_ friends, Shion.”

          Shion remained buried in the fridge, maybe still hunting for something important or maybe just unable to face him.

          “You’d be the first of a your kind I’ve had,” Nezumi continued slowly. He felt like he was being too honest. “Which is why I’m reluctant.”

          “And because you don’t want me to get the wrong idea,” Shion added and placed the last ingredient into Nezumi’s arms. His face was more serene than his voice, which was quavery. “And I won’t.” He shook his head and smiled, and though it seemed forced there was still a genuinely happy spark in his gaze. “Thank you for letting your guard down enough to tell me that.”

          Nezumi hummed. “It wasn’t so bad.”

          “This religieuse won’t be either, I promise. We need to get working on it though or it won’t be done in time.” He guided Nezumi over to the same counter they’d made the cravats and their learning and teaching process began again.

          Shion was so bright and encouraging, and he focused deeply on many of the steps he taught.

          Sometimes Nezumi would get caught watching him and continue to stare, unbothered.

          Whenever Nezumi caught Shion staring at him, however, Shion would look back down at the pastries. Sometimes he would even blush.

          Nezumi enjoyed it all.

 

❀❀❀

          A week went by. Then two weeks. Then two months.

          Nezumi had returned to the theatre. The day he came back Madame manager Fei hadn’t known if she wanted to run into his arms and kiss his cheek or slap him, so she did both.

          He threatened the old woman with a restraining order. It was an obvious bluff. Nezumi would never bother going through a legal process he didn’t believe worked.

          She pinched his recently slapped cheek and laughed at him for it while the rest of the cast and crew watched on in horror.

          Nezumi never let his guard down anywhere near the theatre anymore. Every grey van that passed was met with the most distrustful stares. He was as observant behind the stage as one might be on the streets of Lostblock after dark. When coming or going from the alley or the theatre’s underground parking garage, he was either in the company of Rita and Ryo or moving quickly with a switchblade up his sleeve.

          They went through two plays. The first play was _Rumplestiltskin_ . As punishment for abandoning the theatre for several weeks, Madame Fei cast Nezumi as the titular little goblin and had Rita doll him up absolutely hideously. He still won the hearts of the audience. Upon hearing the elusive silver-eyed actor had returned, the next play’s attendance was nearly doubled and the price of admission went back up. That play was a reimagined version of _Sinbad the Sailor_ , wherein the titular character was played by Ryo because he was half middle-eastern. Nezumi played a flirtatious androgynous pirate whom Sinbad had several affairs with after Sinbad’s soulmate died in the very first act. He snuck Shion and Karan in for this play without telling any of his castmates, but of course Rita found out. She kept her lips shut except when alone in Nezumi’s dressing room with him. There she gushed about how cute and small Shion was and how Nezumi was a monster for abandoning him ever.

          After the play was over, Nezumi walked the mother and son duo back to the bakery.

          Shion told Nezumi he thought Ryo’s acting had improved since Prince Charming.

          Baking with Shion at Karan’s became a recurring thing. He anticipated each time more than the last. When customers finally caught a glimpse of the beautiful slate-haired man who helped make the cravat pastries and weird little trash bag-iced cupcakes, those treats became major attractions. The regulars that made up Nezumi’s fanclub always asked Karan to pass on messages of encouragement to him. None of those messages had as much magic as the encouragements of Shion, with his bubbly laughs and doe-eyed stares at Nezumi’s hands as he worked.

          Shion and Nezumi were _undeniably_ friends.

          They’d had a few more fights about what they were to each other. No matter how much Shion insisted he was fine with whatever they were, no matter what, he couldn’t convince himself and got them both riled up. Each time Nezumi saw Shion upset felt more and more wrong, but he pushed through it, mostly. One time he let a fight tear them apart for a week. He came back later and they moved on as if the fight never happened or had been perfectly resolved.

          Despite their spats, the white-haired baker was the first honest friend Nezumi ever had. His best friend.

          Safu was and would always remain Shion’s best friend and Nezumi had no intention of changing that. He had yet to meet her, but she sounded good for him. However, Nezumi had a feeling they might not get along if they did meet. Shion didn’t keep Safu’s opinions about Nezumi from him. She didn’t approve of him. He didn’t expect her to.

          He kept Shion a secret from almost everyone he knew, intent on protecting him from the dangers that seemed to swirl around him like sharks in bloody water. His coworkers asked, but he lied and said he chased the mystery soulmate off. The only two people he trusted with the knowledge of Shion included Inukashi, who he thought could come in handy as an extra layer of protection for the red-eyed nature lover. The other person was the noisy little bookstore clerk he visited every week or so. The news made her wrinkly face light up with happiness.

          The only loose end was Rita. She was a gossip and one of the few people who wasn’t at all scared of him though she knew what he he was involved with. That might have been exactly why she wasn’t spreading news of Shion around the theatre. _Yet._ Nezumi would need to keep an eye on her.

          It was now approaching mid-summer, the namesake of the Night’s Dream theatre. Originally Madame Manager Fei had planned to show A Midsummer Night’s Dream during mid-summer, but she instead opted to show _Cats The Musical,_ which meant Nezumi would have to wear a fursuit. He was considering quitting again.

          “Please don’t,” Shion begged him.

          It was night but the car honking, pigeon cooing and thrum of the city hadn’t died down. The two boys trotted to the parking lot where Nezumi left his bike when he worked afternoons at the bakery.

          “I’ve always wanted to see _Cats.”_

          “You can still see it if I’m not in it,” Nezumi reminded him.

          “It won’t be the same.”

          “It will get hot in a suit like that in the middle of summer. Madame Fei hasn’t bothered with installing proper air conditioning behind the stage.”

          Shion continued to pout as they scurried across the street. The bike was in view now.

          “Here’s an idea,” Nezumi started. “What if we _both_ went to see Cats?”

          “Sitting together?” Shion’s eyes widened. He seemed instantly in love with the idea. “In the audience?”

          “Then you can nitpick Ryo’s performance to me live.”

          Shion smiled. “It’s a date.”

          Nezumi clicked his tongue, contemplating something new now. They’d never referred to any of their hangouts as _dates_ before.

          

 

❀❀❀

          Every time Nezumi drove Shion home on his motorcycle, Shion wholly believed they were going to die.

          The way Nezumi tilted the entire bike to make turns instead of slowing to a more reasonable pace always got Shion’s heart beating so fast he would feel that one injured muscle sting. Afterwards, he would also discover that he had clung to Nezumi with a death grip. An apology would be shouted, answered usually with a laugh.

          Once or twice Nezumi’s answer had been to cough, but those had both been jokes.

          Nezumi assured Shion over and over that he drove especially carefully with Shion, but that only made Shion worry about how recklessly he drove otherwise. He could only imagine Nezumi racing off the sides of raised freeways onto the backs of moving trucks and performing wheelies at 100 miles an hour. Hearing these theories made Nezumi laugh even more.

          Nezumi’s first gift to Shion--besides pictures of bugs and birds and bats--was a helmet. It was baby blue with little flowers on it. Shion loved it.

          Shion’s home was on a woodsy hillside that overlooked the city. The only way up the hill was a windy scenic road.

          If any part of the bike rides could be considered calm, it was the final stretch through the woods. Nezumi slowed down during this part because of the danger of deer crossing the road. This slower pace allowed for Shion to enjoy holding Nezumi. He laid his head against his back and almost wished he wasn’t wearing a helmet. Then maybe he could hear his heartbeat. He felt the heartbeat before sometimes, though his arms when he clung especially tight. It was a strong steady beat.

          The trees ahead parted and there stood Shion’s home with all its big windows to let as much light as possible inside.

          Nezumi had commented before how strange that was to him. What if people came by at night to watch him. They might be able to see everything inside.

          Shion reminded Nezumi his only stalker so far was Nezumi himself.

          Nezumi stopped the bike right at the bottom step of the front porch, having driven onto the lawn again.

          “There is a _driveway_ , Nezumi.”

          “I like here more.” He took off his helmet and ran his fingers once through his hair. “I can see that jungle of plants on your porch.”

          “Or you can leave your bike in the driveway and walk up there with your legs.” Shion put his helmet back in the bike’s tiny storage box and shook his hair out, then ruffled it up with his fingers.

          Nezumi ruffled his hair with his fingers too and Shion swatted him away with a laugh. “Hey, mess up your own hair!”

          “Not as fun. It doesn’t get as fluffy as yours does. You look like a dandelion.”

          “Dandelions are weeds!”

          “That’s why you keep all these plants. So you can leach off them. Like a plant vampire.”

          “If I was a vampire I’d rather bite you.”

          Nezumi waggled his eyebrows.

          “J-just for insulting me,” Shion amended. “A retaliation bite.”

          “Uh huh.”

          Shion coughed once into his hand and rubbed his arm. “Do you want to come inside for a bite?”

          “A vampire bite?”

          “A human being’s food bite. Like, I have biscuits.”

          Every time Nezumi dropped Shion off at his house, Shion tried to lure him deeper and deeper into it. It took many attempts to get the ball rolling, but Nezumi was now showing some curiosity. He used to drop Shion off from the road. When Shion tried to invite him inside, a switch would flick and Nezumi would become guarded. He’d reject Shion indifferently and drive away. But one day he noticed that there were several plants piled high on the porch, and that’s when he started to cave.

          First he followed him onto the lawn just to see that, yes, there indeed were fifteen potted plants and an outdoor glass table crowding the tiny front porch.

          Then he followed Shion up to that porch to look at all the different species and let Shion name them and tell him random facts about each.

          Then he followed Shion into the doorway to peer inside because he got curious about how tall the windows were on the front of the house because _“No way is the ceiling that tall on the inside”_ but it was. This was, as Shion had explained to him, because the second floor was only his room and a bathroom. The rest was open space.

          Maybe this time he could get Nezumi to follow him to the kitchen.

          Nezumi appeared contemplative. Still guarded, but less and less each time. Finally he sighed and pushed down the kickstand of his bike. “I already took my helmet off anyways.”

          “It’s becoming habit,” Shion smiled.

          Nezumi followed Shion up the stairs without replying.

          Shion kept glancing back at him, just to make sure Nezumi wasn’t changing his mind. He opened the door and let Nezumi go through first. “There’s a…” he looked down at the bulky lace-up boots Nezumi wore and bit his lip. He usually had a no-shoes rule. He’d let it slide this once.

          Nezumi awed at the tall ceiling and the bannister of the second floor. The bannister was lined with hanging ivy.

          Shion kicked off his shoes and hurried past him to the kitchen.

          “What’s that?”

          Shion glanced up to see Nezumi staring at the tropical red acorn-like flowers on the kitchen island.

          “Hawaiian red ginger.”

          Nezumi sat at one of the stools on the island. “Can I touch it?”

          Shion gave Nezumi a wild-eyed look, which drew Nezumi’s eyes away from the plant for a moment. Part of him mentally answered, _“You can do anything you want”_.

          “What is it, your majesty?” He nodded towards the flowers. “Do I look as weird as this thing?”

          “Sort of,” Shion admitted, but only because Nezumi was odd-looking and beautiful just like the ginger. What caught him off guard was how Nezumi had asked him permission for something so mundane. That was always Shion’s job. Nezumi usually just went ahead. He slowly decided to comment on it.

          Nezumi shrugged and simply said “I know you love plants. Can I?”

          “Yes, if you’re kind to it.” He lifted the tupperware that protected a plate of biscuits from the air off and slid it across the island to Nezumi.

          Nezumi caught the plate without looking. He was more interested the ginger. It was a somewhat alien looking plant now that Shion thought about it, at least for someone unfamiliar with exotic plants.

          “There’s a lot of weird ones like this in the living room,” Shion offered, wondering if he could show Nezumi two rooms at once.

          “Nah. This one’s good enough for me.” Nezumi picked up a biscuit and began to chew on it while inspecting the plant.

          Shion eased into his own stool, feeling happy. In this peaceful moment, he felt he could convince himself that spending time with Nezumi like this was _more_ than good enough for him. He _felt_ like he could.

          But could he? Could he really?

          Another sharp pain caused Shion to wince. He released a shaky breath.

          Nezumi’s form, suddenly blurring and shifting as if seen through a liquid filter, didn’t seem to have moved.

          The pain did. It moved under his ribs, over his heart and it hurt, it hurt, _it really hurt._

          “C-can I t-tell you a secret, Nezumi?” Shion uttered, suddenly breathless, suddenly desperate to drown out the growing ringing in his ears.

          He heard Nezumi say something, probably “Your Majesty?” or maybe even “Shion?” if he was feeling more serious.

          “I used to hate plants. I once intentionally killed every plant in our old house. I r-ripped off all their leaves and I-- uughff… I broke their pots on the floor. T-temper tantrum.”

          The ringing continued to rise. The pain in his chest continued to move. So did Nezumi.

          “It was because, when I was helping my mom in the garden, I was--” he released a pained groan. “I was stung by a bee.”

          Maybe this time he heard his name.

          Shion pressed his forehead against the cool marble of the kitchen island. It helped a little. He continued, “So I blamed all the plants.”

          This time he understood Nezumi when he hazily said, “Shion what’s wrong?”

          “A little pain,” he understated. “I feel like I’ve been stung by a bee again.”

          Nezumi was becoming clearer and clearer. “I don’t see a bee anywhere.”

          Shion exhaled and inhaled deeply, slowly, and shook his head when he felt back to normal. The stinging in his chest had settled. He blinked his eyes more, until they were finally clear, until he could finally see the way Nezumi had stood up and come to his side, just to stare at him.

          Nezumi’s expression was complex. His eyebrows were knit and his eyes were serious, scanning, moving up and down Shion’s front and along his face. He'd raised his hands, but withdrew them instead of touching Shion when the boy turned to look back at him.

          Shion looked away. "Sorry about that. It's not unusual. Heartburn."

          "Heartburn?" Nezumi repeated with clear skepticism. "People usually only get heartburn after they eat."

          Shion hummed and brought a biscuit to his mouth.

          " _After_. They eat."

          "It'th noffin' Nethumi," Shion mumbled around the biscuit in his mouth. He was fine. It was just a little sting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See you soon, and thank you for all the love this fic's gotten so far ;v; ♥️


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